LIB-RARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

RivEriSlDE 


i/y^  -\  «•>' 


THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 


JTI^^ 


THE 


BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 


FRANCIS   B?"GUMMERE 

PROFESSOR     OF     ENGLISH     IN     HAVERFORD     COLLEGE 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1908 

j4//  rights  reserved 


Copyright,    1901, 
By   the   MACMILLAN    COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1901.     Reprinted 
October,  1908. 


T<rortooot(  ^9rcB8 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwiclc  &  Smith  Oo. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


I  ne  have  no  text  of  it,  as  I  suppose, 
But  I  shal  fynde  it  in  a  maner  glose. 

Canterbury  Tales,  1919  f. 


PREFACE 

The  opening  pages  of  this  book  contain,  so  one  may  hope, 
an  adequate  answer  to  the  objections  of  those  who  may  have 
been  led  by  its  title  to  expect  a  more  detailed  treatment  of 
poetic  origins  and  a  closer  study  of  such  questions  as  the 
early  forms  of  rhythm,  the  beginnings  of  national  literatures, 
and  the  actual  history  of  lyric,  epic,  and  drama.  Not  these 
problems  have  been  undertaken,  interesting  and  important 
as  they  are,  but  rather  the  rise  of  poetry  as  a  social  institu- 
tion ;  whether  or  not  a  definite  account  of  this  process  has 
been  obtained  must  be  left  for  the  reader  to  judge. 

F.  B.  G. 

9  September,  1901. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

Purpose  and  Method 


PAGE 


Object  of  the  book.  Historical  and  comparative  treatment.  Sources 
of  help.  Modern  scientific  aids.  Limitations  to  their  value. 
The  evidence  of  poetry  itself.     The  curve  of  evolution         .         .         i 

CHAPTER   n 

Rhythm  as  the  Essential  Fact  of  Poetry 

Definitions  of  poetry.  The  line  between  poetry  and  prose.  Sum- 
mary of  the  dispute.  Rhythm  fundamental  and  essential  in 
poetry.  Proofs  from  ethnology,  psychology,  and  the  history  of 
poetry  itself 30 

CHAPTER   HI 

The  Two  Elements  in  Poetry 

The  dualism  in  its  various  forms.  Poetry  of  nature  and  of  art. 
Poetry  of  the  people.  Romantic  and  rationalistic  theories.  The 
real  dualism         . 116 

CHAPTER   IV 

The  Differencing  Elements  of  the  Poetry  of  Art 

Communal  and  individual.  Medieval  and  modern  conditions. 
Evolution  of  sentimental  lyric.  Influence  of  Christianity.  Re- 
actions.    Modern  objective  poetry.     Humour      ....     139 

CHAPTER   V 

The  Differencing  Elements  of  Communal  Poetry 

The  making  of  communal  poetry  a  closed  account.  Elements  of 
the  European  ballad.     Who  made  it.     The  "I"  of  ballads.     Style 


X  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

of  ballads.  Incremental  repetition.  Variation.  Siberian  songs. 
Bridal  songs.  The  vocero  and  kindred  songs  of  mourning. 
The  refrain.  Refrains  and  songs  of  labour.  Harvest-home. 
Processions.     Fly  tings.     Festal  refrains.     The  dance  .         .163 

CHAPTER   VI 

Science  and  Communal  Poetry 

Science  and  theories  of  poetic  origins.  Invention  and  imitation. 
Comparative  literature  and  the  art  of  borrowing.  The  war 
against  instinct.  Instinct  not  set  aside.  The  dualism  in  poetry. 
Greek  drama.     Homogeneity  of  savages  and  of  primitive  men     .     347 

CHAPTER   VII 

The  Earliest  Differentiations  of  Poetry 

The  poet.  Improvisation  in  a  throng.  A  study  of  the  schnaderh'iipfl. 
Stanzas  and  poems.  Diflferentiation  of  poetry.  Lyric,  drama, 
and  epic.     Myths.     Poetic  style 390 

CHAPTER   VIII 

The  Triumph  of  the  Artist 

Improvisation  revived.     Its  fate.    The  two  forces  in  poetry.    Past 

and  present 453 


THE    BEGINNINGS   OF    POETRY 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  POETRY 


CHAPTER   I 
PURPOSE   AND   METHOD 

It  is  the  object  of  the  following  pages  neither  to  defend 
poetry  nor  to  account  for  it,  but  simply  to  study  it  as  a  social 
institution.  Questions  of  its  importance,  of  the  place  which 
it  has  held,  or  ought  to  have  held,  in  the  esteem  of  men,  and 
of  the  part  which  it  is  yet  to  play,  are  interesting  but  not 
vital  to  one  who  is  bent  upon  the  investigation  of  it  as  an 
element  in  human  life.  A  defence  is  doubtless  needed  now 
and  then  by  way  of  answer  to  the  pessimist  Hke  Peacock,  or 
to  the  moralist,  the  founder  of  states  ideal  or  real,  hke  Plato 
and  Mahomet.  Scattered  about  the  Koran  are  hints  that 
verse-making  folk,  like  the  shepherd's  turncock,  are  booked 
for  an  unpleasant  future,  although  it  is  well  known  that  the 
prophet  in  earher  days  had  been  very  fond  of  poetry ;  while 
Plato  himself,  if  one  may  beUeve  his  editors,  began  as  a  poet, 
but  took  to  prose  because  the  older  art  was  declining ;  with 
the  change  he  turned  puritan  as  well,  and  saw  no  room  for 
poets  in  his  ideal  state.  Attacks  of  this  sort,  however,  are  as 
old  as  poetry  itself,  which,  like  "  the  service,  sir,"  has  been 
going  to  the  dogs  time  out  of  mind,  and  very  early  formed 
the  habit  of  looking  back  to  better  days.  For  mediaeval  rela- 
tions these  remembered  arguments  of  Plato,  backed  by  a 
band  of  Christian  writers,  had  put  the  art  to  its  shifts ;  but 
Aristotle's   fragment-^    served   the    renaissance    as    adequate 

1  Twining,  Aristotle,  2d  ed.,  I.  183,  thinks  the  original  treatise  was  written  as 
a  defence  against  the  "cavils  of  prosaic  philosophers"  and  the  objections  of  Plato. 

B  I 


2  THE   BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

answer,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  champion  of 
poetry  in  Aristotle  long  outlived  the  philosopher.^  Petrarch, 
taking  the  laurel,  was  moved  to  defend  poetry  against  her 
foes,  and  yet  found,  as  critics  find  now,  that  she  had  come  by 
some  of  her  worst  wounds  at  the  hands  of  her  votaries ;  for 
who,  in  any  age,  as  Goethe  asked  and  answered  in  his  Divan, 
"  Who  is  driving  poetry  off  the  face  of  the  earth  ?  —  The 
poets."  Certainly  not  the  philosophers  and  men  of  science, 
though  that  is  the  common  belief.  Lefebvre,'^  in  1697, 
thought  that  he  had  given  poetry  its  mortal  blow  when  he 
attacked  it  in  the  name  of  morals  and  of  science ;  and  his 
onslaught  is  worth  the  notice  if  only  to  show  how  little 
Renan  and  others  urge  to-day  which  has  not  been  urged  at 
any  time  since  Petrarch.  Selden,^  Newton,  Bentham,  have 
been  among  the  scoffers;  so,  too,  Pascal.  As  to  Newton,  "A 
friend  once  said  to  him,  '  Sir  Isaac,  what  is  your  opinion  of 
poetry  ? '  His  answer  was,  '  I'll  tell  you  that  of  Barrow  ;  he 
said  that  poetry  was  a  kind  of  ingenious  nonsense.'  "  *  All 
this  is  no  more  than  disrespectful  allusion  to  the  equator, 
jocose  moments  of  the  learned;  yet  it  is  quoted  very  seriously 
by  those  who  think  to  preach  a  funeral  sermon  over  the 
poetic  art.  So  that  when  Renan  expects  to  see  poetry  swal- 
lowed up  by  science,  and  when  it  is  said  that  Goethe,  born  a 
century  later,  would  throw  poetry  to  the  winds  and  give  full 
play  to  his  scientific  genius,  that  Voltaire  would  live  alto- 
gether for  mathematics,  and  that  Shakspere  himself,  "  the 
great  psychologist,"  would  "leave  the  drama  of  humanity  for 

^  In  his  curious  book,  La  Philosophie  du  Bon-Sens,  1737,  p.  15,  D'Argens 
speaks  of  Aristotle  "  dont  les  Ouvrages  sur  la  Poetique  sont  aussi  bons,  que  ceux 
dans  lesquels  il  traite  de  la  Philosophie  sont  peu  utiles." 

2  De  Futilitate  Poetices  auctore  Tanaqtiillo  Fabro  Tanaqiiilli  filio  Verbi 
Divini  Ministro  .  .  .,  Amstel,  1697.  It  was  answered  by  the  Abb^  Massieu 
in  a  Defense  de  la  Poesie  (in  Hist.  d.  I.  Poes.  Fran^oise,  Paris,  1739),  a  pious  but 
heavy  performance. 

8  Table  Talk,  ed.  Arber,  pp.  85  f. 

*  Lord  Radnor  in  Spence's  Anecdotes,  ed.  Singer,  p.  368. 


PURPOSE   AND    METHOD  3 

the  drama  of  the  world,"  abjure  wings,  and  settle  to  the 
collar  with  psychical  research  folk  and  societies  for  child- 
study,  —  even  then  the  friends  of  poetry  need  feel  no  great 
alarm ;  all  this,  allowing  for  conditions  of  the  time,  was  said 
long  ago,  and  has  been  repeated  in  the  dialect  of  each 
generation.  As  for  the  past  of  poetry,  kings  have  been  its 
nursing  fathers  and  queens  its  nursing  mothers ;  and  for  its 
future,  one  may  well  be  content  with  the  words  of  the  late 
M.  Guyau,  a  man  of  scientific  training  and  instincts,  who  has 
looked  carefully  and  temperately  at  the  whole  question  and 
concludes^  that  "poetry  will  continue  to  be  the  natural  lan- 
guage of  all  great  and  lasting  emotion." 

Vindication  apart,  there  is  the  art  of  poetry,  the  technique, 
the  Horatian  view  ;  and  with  this  treatment  of  the  subject 
the  present  work  has  as  little  to  do  as  with  defence  and 
praise.  From  Vida  even  to  Boileau  writers  on  poetry  were 
mainly  concerned  to  teach  the  art,  and  seemed  to  assume 
that  every  bright  boy  ought  to  be  trained  as  a  poet.  With 
this  idea  went  the  conception  of  poetry  as  sum  and  substance 
of  right  living  and  embodiment  of  all  learning,  sacred  and 
profane,  —  witness  not  only  the  famous  lines  of  Milton,  but 
a  part  of  the  epitaph  which  Boccaccio  composed  for  his  own 
tomb  :  studuim  fuit  alma  poesis.  J.  C.  Scaliger,  when  that 
early  enthusiasm  of  the  renaissance  had  begun  to  wane,  turned 
from  art  to  science ;  his  son  and  Casaubon  and  the  rest  took 
up  the  work  of  research  and  let  the  art  of  poetry  languish. 
On  this  scientific  ground,  where,  in  spite  of  the  overthrow  of 
Aristotelian  authority,  in  spite  of  changes  in  method  and  a 
new  range  of  material,  one  may  still  learn  much  from  these 
pioneers,  there  are  now  three  ways  by  which  one  can  come 
to  poetry  from  the  outside,  and  regard  it  not  technically  but 
in  the  spirit  of  research  :  there  is  the  theory  of  poetic  im- 
pulses and   processes  in   general ;   there  is   the  criticism  of 

1  Problhnes  de  V Esthetique  Contemporaine,  pp.  89  ff.,  255. 


4  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

poems  and  poetry  as  an  objective  study ;  and  there  are  the 
recording,  the  classifying,  and  the  comparing  of  the  poetic 
product  at  large.  The  present  work  belongs  to  this  third 
division,  and  in  its  method  must  keep  mainly  within  histori- 
cal and  comparative  bounds.  It  is  not  concerned  in  any  way 
with  the  poetic  impulse,  or  with  the  poem  as  object  of  critical 
study ;  it  regards  the  whole  poetic  product  as  a  result  of 
human  activity  working  in  a  definite  field.  This  must  be 
clearly  understood.  At  the  outset  of  an  attempt  to  throw 
some  light  upon  the  beginnings  of  poetry,  it  is  well  to  bear 
in  mind  that  by  poetry  is  meant,  not  the  poetic  impulse,  but 
the  product  of  that  impulse,  and  that  by  beginnings  are 
meant  the  earliest  actual  appearances  of  poetry  as  an  ele- 
ment in  the  social  life  of  man,  and  not  the  origins  or  ultimate 
causes,  biologically  or  psychologically  considered,  of  poetic 
expression.  What  the  origin  of  poetry  may  have  been,  and 
to  what  causes,  however  remote,  in  the  body  and  life  of  man 
must  be  attributed  the  earliest  conceivable  rhythmic  utter- 
ance, are  questions  for  a  tribunal  where  metaphysics  and 
psychology  on  the  one  hand,  and  biology  on  the  other 
hand,  have  entered  conflicting  claims.  As  for  biology,  until 
one  has  found  the  source  of  life  itself,  it  is  useless  to  follow 
brain  dissections  in  an  effort  to  discover  the  ultimate  origins 
of  poetry.  To  be  sure,  psychology  has  a  legitimate  field  of 
inquiry  in  discussing  the  source  of  aesthetic  manifestations ;  ^ 
and  going  deeper  into  things,  it  would  be  pleasant  if  one 
could  lay  hold  of  what  philosophers  call  "the  germinal 
power  of  whatever  comes  to  be,"  the  keimkraft  des  seienden  ; 
but  times  are  hardly  ripe  for  such  a  feat.  Even  Weismann  ^ 
concedes  a  "  soul,"  a  capacity  not  yet  explainable,  for  appre- 

1  Ribot,  Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  pp.  329  ff.,  rejects  Guyau's  emendation  of 
Grant  Allen,  and  hacks  Groos  in  his  view  of  the  play  theory. 

2  "  Gedankcn  iiber  Musik  bei  Thieren  und  beim  Menschen,"  1889,  in  Deutsche 
Rundschau,  LXI.  50  ff. 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  5 

elating  music,  and,  by  implication,  poetry.  It  is  better  in 
the  present  state  of  things  to  assume  poetry  as  an  element 
in  human  life,  and  to  come  as  close  as  possible  to  its  primi- 
tive stages,  its  actual  beginnings.  What  these  beginnings  of 
poetry  were,  in  what  form  it  first  made  a  place  for  itself 
among  human  institutions,  and  over  what  paths  it  wandered 
during  the  processes  of  growth  and  differentiation  even  in 
prehistoric  times,  are  questions  belonging  to  the  answerable 
p^rt  of  that  catechism  about  his  own  life  which  man  has 
been  making  and  unmaking  and  making  again  ever  since  he 
began  to  remember  and  to  forecast.  We  have  here  no  con- 
cern with  the  perplexing  question  why  aesthetic  activity  was 
first  evolved ;  it  is  quite  another  matter  when  we  undertake 
to  learn  how  aesthetic  activity  made  itself  seen  and  felt.  In 
brief,  to  seek  the  origins  of  poetry  would  be  to  seek  the 
cause  of  its  existence  as  a  phenomenon,  to  hunt  that  elusive 
keimkraft  des  seienden ;  to  inquire  into  the  beginnings  of 
poetry  is  to  seek  conditions  and  not  causes. 

Nothing,  however,  is  harder  than  to  carry  out  this  simple 
plan ;  from  a  work  on  poetry  take  away  both  theory  and 
criticism,  and  what  is  left .''  It  is  true  that  since  F.  Schlegel, 
a  hundred  years  ago,  said  ^  of  art  in  general  that  its  science 
is  its  history,  historical  and  comparative  treatment  of  poetry 
has  come  speedily  to  the  fore ;  but  that  mystery  which 
rightly  enough  clings  to  a  poetic  process,  the  traditions  of 
sanctity  which  belong  to  genius,  and  the  formidable  literature 
of  aesthetics,  have  all  worked  together  to  keep  the  study  of 
poetry  out  of  line  with  the  study  of  other  human  institutions, 
and  to  give  it  an  unchartered  freedom  from  the  control  of 
facts  which  has  done  more  harm  than  good.  Consider  that 
touch  of  futility  which  vexes  the  mind  when  it  sets  about  dis- 
cussion of  a  topic  so  far  from  the  daily  business  of  life  ;  con- 
sider the  great  cloud  of  witnesses  who  can  be  summoned 

^  Athenaum,  III.  67. 


6  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

from  any  library  to  prove  that  of  all  printed  silliness  nothing 
reaches  quite  so  silly  a  pitch  as  twaddle  about  the  bards ; 
add,  too,  that  no  process  is  so  difficult  to  observe  and  ana- 
lyze as  the  making  of  a  poem ;  and  it  is  easy  to  see  why 
writers  on  poetry  are  always  flying  to  cover  in  psychology 
and  aesthetics  or  in  criticism.^  Facing  the  facts  of  poetry, 
a  scholar  can  treat  the  poetic  impulse  and  keep  the  facts  at 
arm's  length,  or  even  quite  out  of  his  range.  Treating  the 
poetic  product,  whether  genetically  or  historically  or  com- 
paratively, tracing  the  evolution  of  poetry  as  a  whole,  for 
its  own  laws  of  growth  and  decay,  or  regarding  its  place  as 

1  Criticism  has  been  treated  of  late  with  scientific  precision.  See  the  biblio- 
graphical array  in  Gayley  and  Scott's  admirable  Uletkods  and  Materials  of  Literary 
Criticisfu,  Boston,  1899.  From  the  imperial  critic,  the  "  gentle  reader  "  and  patron 
represented  by  Montaigne,  who  gives  no  reasons  but  his  own  likes  and  dislikes, 
as  witness  that  delightful  essay  on  books,  in  its  opening  sentence,  through  the 
official  critics,  down  to  M.  Brunetiere,  the  scientific  critic,  faithful  to  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  in  general,  and  attentive  to  the  law  in  the  particular  case,  it  is  to  be 
noted  how  criticism  has  been  approaching  the  sociological  domain,  the  study  of 
poetry  as  an  element  of  human  life.  Sainte-Beuve  was  still  a  critic  of  poets  and 
poems,  for  all  his  "  natural  method " ;  Taine  crossed  the  border  and  studied 
poetry,  the  product,  under  sociological  and  ethnological  conditions.  See  Sainte- 
Beuve,  Nonveaux  Lundis,  VIII.  87  f.,  69  f.;  IX.  70;  and  Taine,  Derniers  Essais, 
Paris,  1894,  pp.  58  f.  M.  Brunetiere,  in  carrying  on  the  plan  of  Taine,  and  Henne- 
quin,  in  opposing  it,  work  on  sociological  and  historical  ground,  rather  than  in 
the  old  aesthetics.  Hennequin's  Critique  is  "  scientifique ";  while  a  title  like 
M.  Brunetiere's  Evolution  of  Species  in  Literature  can  be  conceded  to  criticism 
only  by  taking  such  liberties  with  the  word  as  to  leave  it  practically  undefined. 
Still,  these  men  work  for  criticism  if  not  in  it,  and  they  give  no  reason  for  disput- 
ing what  is  said  in  the  text  about  the  paucity  of  books  on  poetry  as  an  element  in 
human  society.  They  have  the  modern  poet,  the  modern  poem,  in  view;  they 
wish  to  lay  down  metes  and  bounds  and  adjust  the  law.  Hennequin  will  found  a 
new  science,  "  an  immense  anthropology,"  made  up  of  all  the  vital  sciences 
{Crit.  Sci.,  pp.  185  f.) ;  but  his  place  is  with  the  critics,  and  not  with  scholars  in 
historical  and  comparative  literature.  His  asthopsychology  indicates  devotion  to 
the  poetic  impulse  rather  than  to  the  product  Mr.  Granger  (  Worship  of  the 
Romans,  p.  vii)  has  lately  called  up  the  word  ethology,  suggested  by  Stuart  Mill 
{Logic  of  the  Moral  Sciences,  pp.  213  ff.,  218),  in  line  with  a  hint  that  the  founda- 
tions of  comparative  psychology  must  be  laid  in  the  study  of  the  people  and  of 
their  habits  of  thought.  Something  of  this  sort  has  been  done  by  M.  Le  Bon  in 
his  Psycholof^ie  des  Foules,  quoted  below. 


PURPOSE    AND    METHOD  7 

an  institution  in  human  society,  he  must  hold  unbroken  com- 
merce with  a  bewildering  mass  of  material.  Hence  the  de- 
light which  animates  to  their  task  the  numberless  writers 
of  "  thoughts  about  poetry,"  and  the  dismay  with  which 
the  historian  looks  upon  his  rough  and  unwieldy  subject. 
Books  beyond  the  power  of  any  modern  reader  to  compass 
have  been  written  on  the  poetic  impulse ;  while  all  the 
books  which  treat  the  poetic  product  as  an  element  of  pub- 
lic life  could  be  carried  in  one's  pocket,^  —  and  one  need 
be  no  Schaunard  for  the  task.  Yet  the  facts  of  poetry 
ought  to  precede  the  theory,  —  facts,  moreover,  that  should 
be  brought  into  true  relations  with  the  development  of  social 
man.  A  record  of  actual  poetry  ;  then  a  history  of  its  be- 
ginnings and  progress  as  an  achievement  of  human  soci- 
ety ;  then  an  account  of  it  with  regard  to  its  origin  and 
exercise  as  a  function  of  the  individual  mind,  —  such  is  the 
process  by  which  there  could  have  been  built  up  a  clear 
and  rational  science  of  poetry,  the  true  poetics.  Dis  aliter 
visum.  There  is  a  fairly  good  record  of  poetry,  with  gaps 
due  to  chance  and  neglect,  many  of  which  chance  and  energy 
may  yet  combine  to  fill.  As  an  achievement  of  human  soci- 
ety, poetry  has  had  scant  attention  ;  and  the  present  work  is 
intended,  in  however  modest  and  imperfect  performance,  to 
supply  material  and  make  an  outline  for  such  a  study. 

With  such  an  object  in  view,  and  in  such  a  spirit,  what  is 
the  method  by  which  one  is  to  come  at  the  beginnings  of 
poetry,  and  what  material  is  one  to  employ  ?  Literature 
itself,  and  the  comparative,  historical  method,  are  indicated 
by  the  very  terms  of  the  quest ;    but  what  of  other  aids .-' 

^  Such  are  the  Comparative  Literature  of  Posnett,  and  the  less  didactic  work 
of  Letourneau,  H Evolution  Litteraire  dans  les  diverses  Races  Humaines,  Paris, 
1894.  The  former  was  mainly  pioneer  work,  meant  to  open  and  define  its  sub- 
ject; and  in  this  it  attained  its  end.  This  sociological  method  has  been  applied, 
of  course,  in  a  critical  way,  to  many  individual  works,  and  to  many  periods  of 
literature ;  not  so,  however,  with  the  poetic  product  at  large. 


8  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

There  is  no  doubt  that  science  has  opened  mines  of  research 
unknown  to  a  former  generation  of  scholars  in  poetics ;  what 
have  zoology,  physiology,  psychology,  ethnology,  anthro- 
pology, sociology,  to  say  to  the  beginnings  of  rhythmic  utter- 
ance ?  From  the  study  of  those  animals  which  stand  nearest 
to  man  in  intelligence  and  social  instincts  there  should  come 
in  course  of  time  a  better  knowledge  of  the  physical  conditions 
under  which  primitive  folk  essayed  their  earliest  poetry ;  but 
it  is  conceded  that  the  present  state  of  these  studies,  even  in 
obvious  cases  like  the  singing  of  birds  and  the  social  dances 
and  amusements  of  sundry  animals,  offers  scant  help  to  the 
student  of  poetry,  and  often  leads  him  into  absurdities.  Dar- 
win's suggestion  that  the  lyric  poem  might  in  some  way  go 
back  to  the  call  of  the  male  homo  to  the  female  at  mating 
time,  induced  Scherer  to  put  the  origins  of  poetry  in  general 
upon  this  purely  biological  basis ;  ^  but  Scherer's  enthusiasm 
has  met  no  hearty  response  and  seems  to  fly  in  the  face  of 
certain  important  facts.  The  book  of  Groos,  to  which  further 
reference  will  be  made,  gives  a  better  series  of  analogies  with 
the  subject  in  hand,  but  is  not  to  be  used  in  any  positive  or 
conclusive  way. 

Help  of  a  more  substantial  kind  can  be  found  in  the  re- 
searches of  modern  psychology ;  and  indeed,  when  these 
shall  have  been  put  in  available  form,  they  will  greatly 
increase  the  materials  for  a  study  of  the  poetic  process.  To 
what  extent  the  study  of  the  poetic  product,  however,  may  use 
such  aids,  is  a  quite  different  question.     For  example,  there 

^  There  is  more  to  be  said  for  the  partial  origin  of  poetry  in  choral  songs  of  a 
sexual  character  sung  after  the  communal  feast  of  the  horde  or  clan.  This  "  sex- 
freedom,"  so  revolting  to  modern  ideas,  left  late  traces  in  history;  and  Professor 
Karl  Pearson  quotes  Tsakni's  La  Russie  Sectaire  to  the  effect  that  such  license 
still  prevails  at  fairs  and  periodic  festivals  in  Russia,  comliined  with  choral  dance. 
—  Pearson,  The  Chances  of  Death,  II.  243.  There  are  Australian  festivals  of  this 
sort;  and  license  of  May-Day,  of  Shrove-Tuesday,  and  the  rest,  is  familiar  in 
European  survival.  On  the  other  hand,  it  will  be  found  that  erotic  poetry  of  the 
individual  and  lyric  sort  is  almost  unknown  among  savages. 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  9 

is  one  doctrine,  which,  if  it  were  established  upon  an  absolute 
and  universal  truth,  could  be  applied  to  the  problem  of  primi- 
tive verse  with  such  success  as  to  throw  a  bridge  over  the 
chasm  between  what  is  recorded  and  what  is  unrecorded,  and 
so  lead  one  cannily  into  the  midst  of  the  unknown.  The  the- 
ory was  laid  down  by  Haeckel  ^  that  "  ontogenesis,  or  the 
development  of  the  individual,  is  a  short  and  quick  repeti- 
tion " —  or  recapitulation  —  "of  phylogenesis,  or  the  develop- 
ment of  the  tribe  to  which  it  belongs,  determined  by  the  laws 
of  inheritance  and  adaptation."  Schultze,  in  his  excellent 
book  on  fetishism,^  uses  this  law,  if  law  it  be,  in  determining 
the  mental  state  of  primitive  folk ;  "  what  is  true  of  the  child 
is  true  of  the  wild  man,  whose  consciousness  is  in  the  childish 
embryonic  stage,"  and  who  has  reached  the  fetishistic  epoch 
of  mental  growth.  A  savage  who  gets  a  clock  wants  to  wrap 
it  in  costly  furs ;  so  does  a  child.  Professor  Baldwin,  too, 
accepts  the  principle  as  a  guide  in  working  out  analogies 
between  the  development  of  the  child  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  race,  of  society.^  For  example,  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  "  I  "  in  children  seems  analogous  in  point  of 
development  to  the  individual  consciousness  of  primitive 
man ;  and  it  is  evidently  of  value  to  the  student  of  early 
poetry  to  find  his  conclusion  that  such  poetry  is  mainly 
impersonal  backed  by  testimony  from  those  who  have  studied 
the  inner  life  of  infants  and  children  to  the  effect  that  fear, 
anger,  likes  and  dislikes,  are  emotions  that  precede  percep- 
tion of  the  subject's  own  personality.     A.  W.  Schlegel  used 

1  History  of  Creation,  2  vols.,  trans.,  New  York,  1893,  I.  355,  quoting  from 
his  General  Morphology.  He  adds  that  by  "  tribe  "  he  means  "  the  ancestors 
which  form  the  chain  of  progenitors  of  the  individual  concerned." 

-  Der  Fetischismus,  Leipzig,  1871,  pp.  61,  74  f.  A  pretty  little  parallel  of 
savages  and  children  in  the  worship  of  images  and  dolls  was  drawn  by  M.  Anatole 
France  in  a  review  of  Lemonnier's  Comedie  des  Jouets.  See  France,  La  Vie 
Litteraire,  II.  lO  ff. 

3  Mental  Development  in  the  Child  and  the  Race,  New  York,  1895,  PP-  'S» 
335  ff.;    Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  New  York,  1897,  pp.  9,  189,  etc. 


10  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

this  analogy  a  hundred  years  ago ;  ^  and,  before  him,  Gott- 
sched,  who  had  far  keener  historic  sense  than  one  would  sup- 
pose, explained  early  epic  by  the  curiosity  which  children  show 
in  their  demand  for  tales  of  every  sort,  adding  that  "  primi- 
tive folk  were  exactly  like  these  little  creatures,  who  have  no 
experience  and  such  store  of  curiosity."  ^  In  fact,  as  is  so  often 
the  case  with  a  new  exact  theory  in  science,  the  general  idea 
has  been  a  commonplace  time  out  of  mind.  Shelley,  declar- 
ing that  "the  savage  is  to  ages  what  the  child  is  to  years,"  is 
echoing  eighteenth-century  thought,  with  its  idea  of  human- 
ity passing  from  childhood  to  riper  growth ;  and  Turgot  and 
Condorcet^  only  added  the  notion  of  human  perfectibility  and 
infinite  development  to  an  analogy  which  was  first  made,  so  it 
would  seem,  by  the  Italian  Vico.  The  parallel  is  every- 
where ;  Macaulay  uses  it  in  his  theory  of  poetic  degeneration, 
Peacock  in  his  Four  Ages,  and  Victor  Hugo  in  the  preface  to 
Cromzvell.  Not  as  an  idea,  but  as  a  formula,  Mr.  Spencer 
makes  the  biological  doctrine  of  recapitulation  a  part  of  his 
sociological  system.  Professor  Karl  Pearson  appeals  to  the 
same  doctrine  when  he  wishes  to  say  a  word  for  the  matri- 
archate;'*  in  the  life  of  the  child,  he  notes,  "the  mother  and 
the  woman  play  the  largest  part ;  and  so  it  is  in  the  religion 
and  social  institutions  of  primitive  man."  Thus  a  child's 
world  reproduces  the  primitive  world;  and  the  mdrchoi, 
where  witches  are  still  powerful  though  hated  and  malignant 
beings,  show  what  is  really  the  priestess  of  early  matriarchal 
cult  fallen  into  disfavour  under  patriarchal  conditions.  Or, 
finally,  to  choose  an  unexceptionable  case,  Professor  Biicher,'' 
noting  that  long-continued  and  laborious  activity  is  easily 
kept  up  provided  it  pass  as  play  and  not  as  labour,  takes 

^  Vorlesungen,  Stuttgart,  1884,  I.  275. 

*  Critische  Dichtkunst,  \'Tyiy  P-  87. 

'  Esquisse  des  Progres  de  V Esprit- Hujnain. 

*  Essay  on  "  Ashiepattle"  in   The  Chances  of  Death,  TI.  53, 
5  Arbeit  und  Rhythtnus,  p.  15. 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  II 

the  dances  of  savages,  and  the  games  of  a  civilized  child, 
as  analogous  to  the  efforts  of  earliest  man.  It  is  true,  too, 
that  savages,  and  presumably  early  man,  are  like  the  child  in 
quick  alternations  of  mood,  in  the  possibility  of  laughter  and 
tears  at  once,  in  many  traits  of  the  kind ;  so  far  Letourneau  ^ 
is  perfectly  right  in  his  parallel.  Now  all  these  cases,  in 
varying  degree,  are  meant  as  arguments  from  analogy,  and, 
as  is  usual  when  one  deals  with  analogy,  may  be  regarded  as 
more  or  less  desirable  aids  to  evidence  that  is  direct.  By 
itself,  however,  analogy  must  not  be  conclusive  ;  in  the  matter 
under  consideration  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  proof  ;  and  alone 
this  rule  of  ontogenesis  and  phylogenesis  is  not  enough  to 
bridge  the  chasm  and  allow  one  to  describe  prehistoric  poetry. 
Such,  however,  is  precisely  the  task  that  some  bold 
pioneers  have  essayed.  Letourneau,  indeed,  is  hardly  to  be 
placed  in  this  category,  although  he  upholds  the  doctrine 
and  puts  it  to  use ;  ^  for  his  conclusions  are  invariably  forti- 
fied by  facts  from  ethnology  and  literature.  But  the  author 
of  a  book  on  primitive  poetry,  Jacobowski,^  belongs  here  ; 
freed  from  all  obHgations  of  research,  all  study  of  actual 
facts,  he  trips  jauntily  into  the  unknown,  hand  in  hand  with 
this  omnipotent  theory  as  guide.  True,  he  affects  the  scien- 
tific habit  of  mind,  and  once  refers  the  reader,  for  further 
light  on  some  difficult  problem,  to  "  my  little  essay  on  the 
Psychology  of  a  Kiss  "  ;  for  he  is  by  way  of  being  a  lyric 
poet,  and  seems  of  the  tribe  of  him  whom  Heine  described 
as  "  personal  enemy  of  Jehovah,  believing  only  in  Hegel 
and  in  Canova's  Venus,"  save  that  one  must  here  make  the 

^  V  Evolutioti  Litter  aire,  p.  8l. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  15  f.,  "  repetition,  approximative,  abregee  surtout;  mais  neanmoins 
elle  est  une  repetition."  But  at  once  he  quotes  some  striking  facts,  in  order  to 
prove  his  thesis  (that  song  preceded  speech),  and  goes  back  for  a  child  analogy 
to  the  book  of  B.  Perez,  UArt  et  la  Poesie  chez  P Enfant,  a  book  which  the  present 
writer  has  been  unable  to  consult. 

3  Die  Anfdnge  der  Poesie,  Dresden  and  Leipzig,  1891. 


12  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

easy  substitution  of  Haeckel  for  Hegel.  So,  too,  Jacobowski 
is  a  statistician,  an  observer,  as  witness  that  work  on  the 
kiss,  evidently  in  no  spirit  of  Johannes  Secundus ;  and  he 
gives  incidental  notes  on  the  poetic  process  which  have  a 
very  scientiiic  ring.  "  I  know  a  young  poet,"  he  says  in  a 
burst  of  confidence,  and  perhaps  remembering  Goethe's  fifth 
Roman  elegy,  "who  actually  makes  his  best  poems  in  the 
very  ecstasy  of  wine  and  of  love."  He  draws  a  diagram,  like 
those  convincing  charts  in  history  and  political  economy,  to 
illustrate  the  "  hunger-curve "  and  the  "  thirst-curve,"  and 
to  answer  the  question  why  there  is  so  much  poetry  that 
deals  with  drinking  and  so  little  that  deals  with  eating. 
Here  and  there  a  savage  tribe  is  named,  a  traveller  is  in- 
voked ;  but  Jacobowski's  main  trust  is  in  the  human  infant 
and  in  his  own  poetic  self.  That  the  book  has  been  taken 
seriously  is  perhaps  due  to  the  only  part  of  it  worth  con- 
sidering, which  traces  the  origin  of  poetry  to  cries  of  joy  or 
of  pain.  This,  of  course,  in  great  elaboration  ;  by  the  onto- 
genetic method  one  may  study  poetry,  that  is,  emotional 
expression,  in  the  modern  infant,  and  then  by  a  simple 
phylogenetic  process  "transfer  the  result  to  humanity." 
Rid  of  all  friction  from  facts,  literary  and  sociological,  the 
pace  of  proof  is  breathless,  and  pampered  jades  of  investiga- 
tion are  left  far  out  of  sight  in  the  rear.  What  was  the  first 
poem  .''  —  A  cry  of  fright.  Why  .-*  —  All  observers  agree  that 
the  first  emotion  noted  in  a  child  —  as  early,  says  Preyer,  as 
the  second  day  —  is  fear.  Watch  by  the  cradle,  then,  and 
note  the  infant's  gasps,  cooings,  gurglings,  cryings,  grimaces, 
gestures ;  these  will  give  in  due  succession  the  stages  and 
the  history  of  literature.  In  this  attitude,  too,  Jacobowski 
watches  for  the  "  primitive  lyric."  He  quotes  Preyer's 
account  of  a  baby  which,  on  the  day  of  its  birth,  showed 
pleasure  at  the  presence  of  light  and  displeasure  at  relative 
darkness.     There   follow  more  statistics  of   the  same  sort, 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  I3 

"lyrical  sounds  of  delight,"  heard  from  another  baby  for  the 
same  reason.  Now,  says  the  author  triumphantly,  "  pre- 
cisely "  —  the  word  is  to  be  noted  —  ^^ precisely  the  same  effect 
of  light  and  darkness  must  have  been  experienced  by  primi- 
tive many  ^  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  argue  against  such 
an  extreme  of  absurdity  as  this ;  the  lyric  expression  of  a 
new-born  baby's  pleasure  in  light  and  fear  of  darkness  is  no 
parallel  to  the  lyric  and  poetic  expression  of  primitive  man, 
not  only  for  the  reason  that  overwhelming  evidence  shows 
all  primitive  poetical  expression  of  emotion  to  have  been 
collective,  but  because  this  emotion  was  based  on  very  keen 
physical  perceptions.  The  analogy  of  infant  growth  in 
expression  with  the  development  of  primitive  man's  expres- 
sion comes  soon  to  wreck ;  who  furnished  for  infant  man 
the  adult  speech,  gesture,  manner,  upon  which  the  imitative, 
actual  infant  works  in  his  progress  through  babyhood } 
Moreover,  the  infant  individual  of  an  adult  race  and  the 
adult  individual  of  an  infant  race  still  differ,  qua  infant 
and  adult,  as  human  beings.  Think  of  the  adult  savage's 
activity,  his  sight,  his  hearing,  his  powers  of  inference 
from  what  he  sees ;  put  him  with  his  fellows  even  into 
primitive  conditions ;  and  then  consider  the  claim  that  such 
a  wild  man's  earhest  poem,  a  lyric,  must  be  analogous  to  the 
first  cry  of  pleasure  or  of  pain  uttered  by  the  solitary  infant 
on  the  first  dull  perception,  say  of  hght  or  of  hunger !  Even 
the  biological  analogy,  pure  and  simple,  will  now  and  then 
break  down.  It  has  been  asserted  that  the  male  voice  was 
once  far  higher  than  now  in  point  of  pitch,  phylogenetic 
inference  from  the  ontogenetic  fact  of  the  boy's  voice  before 
it  deepens;   but  Wallaschek^  examines  the  facts  in  regard 

1  Work  quoted,  p.  96.  Even  old  Gottsched,  Crii.  Dichtkt.,  p.  68,  called  a 
child's  weeping  "  a  song  of  lament,"  and  its  laughter  "  a  song  of  joy."  "  Every 
passion,"  he  says,  '■'■has  its  own  tone  with  which  it  makes  itself  manifest"  really 
a  better  hint  of  origins  than  this  scientific  masquerading  of  Jacobowski. 

2  Primitive  Music,  pp.  76,  78. 


14  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

to  this  claim,  and  finds  not  only  adverse  evidence,  but  a  con- 
stant tendency  to  raise  the  pitch  as  one  passes  from  oldest 
times  to  the  present.  There  is  another  law  of  relativity 
than  that  to  which  the  argument  of  child  and  race  appeals, 
—  not  how  primitive  poetry  compares  with  modern  emotional 
expression,  but  how  primitive  poetry  was  related  to  the 
faculty  and  environment  of  primitive  man.  Looked  at  in 
this  light,  it  might  well  appear  that  "  simple  expression  of 
joy,"  or  what  not,  is  a  gross  misrepresentation  of  the  lyric 
in  question,  and  that  the  relative  childishness  of  savages, 
and,  as  ohe  argues,  of  primitive  men  generally,  is  not  a  posi- 
tive childishness  with  regard  to  the  conditions  of  their  life.^ 
In  fine,  the  analogy  and  the  principle  are  in  the  present  state 
of  things  useless  for  any  direct  inference  about  primitive 
poetry.  When  the  sequence  of  emotions  and  of  emotional 
expressions  has  been  established  for  infant  life,  it  will  have 
an  interest  for  the  student  of  early  literature,  and  may  even 
give  him  substantial  help  by  way  of  suggestion,  corrective, 
test.  But  to  set  up  a  provisional  account  of  the  origins  and 
growth  of  infant  emotional  expression,  and  then  to  transfer 
this  scheme  to  primitive  culture  as  the  origins  and  growth  of 
human  poetry,  is,  on  the  face  of  it,  absurd. 

Closely  akin  to  the  error  which  makes  unwarranted  use 
of  psychological  theories  is  the  abuse  of  ethnological  facts. 
True,  the  value  of  ethnology  to  the  study  of  primitive  poetry 
is  immense ;   until  one  hundred    and   fifty  years   ago,^  the 

^  The  best  objection  against  this  analogy  in  any  definite  use  is  made  by 
O.  fjruppe,  Griechische  Culle  und  Mythen,  p.  199.  The  child  and  the  savage,  he 
p(jints  out,  have  each  a  small  range  of  perceptions ;  the  ways  in  which  they 
enlarge  this  range  are  diametrically  opposed.  One  does  it  productively ;  the 
other,  receptively.  See,  too,  a  bit  of  sarcasm  over  the  complacent  scorn  for  the 
"  childish  "  savages  felt  by  civilized  man,  Grosse,  Anfange  der  Ktmsi,  pp.  51  f. 

^  Dr.  Brown,  Adam  Smith,  Lord  Monboddo,  and  others  were  leading  English- 
men in  the  movement  to  use  the  savage  to  explain  early  man.  Smith  and  Mon- 
boddo enjoyed  this  literary  vivisection,  the  former  once  watching  "  a  negro  dance 
to  his  own  song  the  war-dance  of  his  own  country,  with  such  vehemence  of  action 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  15 

vital  fault  of  writers  on  poetry  lay  in  their  neglect  of  what 
John  Evelyn  calls  "  plaine  and  prodigious  barbarisme,"  and 
even  down  to  the  present,  this  contempt  for  lower  forms  of 
poetry  vitiates  the  work  of  writers  in  aesthetics ;  neverthe- 
less, there  is  caution  to  be  applied  in  arguments  from  the 
modern  savage  as  in  those  from  the  modern  infant.  Briefly 
put,  the  notion  is  abroad  that  the  lower  one  goes  in  the  scale 
of  culture  among  living  savage  tribes,  the  nearer  one  has 
come  to  actual  primitive  culture,  to  unaccommodated  man,  the 
thing  itself,  as  it  was  in  the  very  beginning  of  human  life  ; 
but,  unless  great  care  be  used,  one  will  follow  this  path  to 
the  utter  confusion  of  progress  and  retrogression.  All  would 
be  easy  work  if  one  could  accept  the  statement  of  Gum- 
plowicz,^  that  "  So  long  as  one  unitary  homogeneous  group 
is  not  influenced  by  or  does  not  exert  an  influence  upon  an- 
other, it  persists  in  the  original  primitive  state.  Hence,  in 
distant  quarters  of  the  globe,  shut  off  from  the  world,  we  find 
hordes  in  a  state  as  primitive,  probably,  as  that  of  their  fore- 
fathers a  million  years  ago."  Surely  not  as  primitive;  the 
very  terms  of  the  phrase  deny  it ;  and  even  in  the  stagnation 
of  culture,  through  wastes  of  dull  and  unmeaning  ages,  man, 
like  men,  grows  old  :  tacitisqiic  scnescimiis  annis.  Neither 
individual  nor  tribal  life  can  stand  still.  What  one  may  prop- 
erly do  with  ethnological  evidence  is  to  note  how  certain 
conditions  of  culture  are  related  to  the  expression  of  human 
emotion,  and  to  conclude  that  the  same  conditions,  for  these 

and  expression,  that  the  whole  company,  gentlemen  as  well  as  ladies,  got  up  upon 
chairs  and  tables."  See  the  Essays,  Edinburgh,  1795,  "Of  the  Imitative  Arts," 
Parts  II.,  III.,  and  the  fragment  "  Of  the  Affinity  between  Music,  Dancing,  and 
Poetry."  The  main  credit,  however,  belongs  to  Turgot.  In  his  "  Plan  du  Prem. 
Disc,  sur  I'Hist.  Universelle,"  CEnvres,  II.  216,  he  uses  the  savages  of  America 
to  illustrate  the  state  of  primitive  man.  He  is  also  strong  for  the  milieu.  "  Si 
Racine  ffit  ne  au  Canada  chez  les  Hurons  ...  !  "  he  says,  II.  264;  and  his 
other  illustrations  are  suggestive  (in  the  "  Plan  du  2.  Disc").  II.  265,  he  notes 
the  homogeneity  of  barbaric  races. 

1  Outlines  of  Sociology,  trans.  Moore,  p.  85. 


l6  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

are  a  stable  quantity,  would  affect  the  emotional  expression 
of  primitive  man  in  a  similar  way,  allowing,  however,  —  and 
here  is  the  important  concession,  —  for  the  different  state  of 
the  intellectual  and  emotional  powers  in  an  early  and  vigorous 
tribal  life  as  compared  with  the  stagnant  or  degenerate  life 
of  a  belated  culture.^  Two  pitfalls  lurk  under  the  analogy. 
It  will  not  do  to  argue  directly  from  a  sunken  race  back  to 
a  mounting  race  found  at  the  same  level ;  again,  it  will  not 
do  to  argue  that  because  the  mounting  race,  when  arrived 
at  its  prime,  has  not  a  certain  quality  or  function,  that  it 
therefore  never  had  such  a  quality  or  function.^  If  one  will 
but  look  at  the  thing  honestly,  what  a  brazen  assumption  it 
is  that  this  makeshift  human  creature  is  always  learning  but 
never  forgetting,  always  gaining  but  never  losing,  and  that 
man  of  to-day  holds  fast  the  unimpaired  x  of  man's  primitive 
powers  along  with  all  that  change  and  growth  and  countless  rev- 
olutions have  brought  him !  It  is  a  mistake  of  the  first  order 
to  assume  that  a  form  of  expression  now  unknown  among 
men  must  have  been  unknown  to  those  who  made  the  first 

1  The  outright  degeneration  assumed  by  Le  Maistre  need  not  come  into  the 
account.  Human  progress  is  now  conceded  to  be  a  resultant  of  opposing  forces 
of  growth  and  decay.  Mr.  Talcott  Williams  has  an  interesting  paper,  "  Was 
Primitive  Man  a  Modern  Savage?"  in  the  Report  of  the  Smithsonian  Inst.,  1896, 
pp.  541  ff.  His  main  point  is,  that  the  modern  savage  has  deteriorated  under  press- 
ure. Primitive  man  was  in  a  more  or  less  "  empty  earth,"  and  was  not  crowded 
by  his  fellows.  The  god  of  war  is  always  a  junior  member  of  Olympus.  So,  too, 
Professor  Baldwin  {^Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  p.  214)  argues  for  a  reign 
of  peace,  a  "  sort  of  organic  resting-place,"  in  the  child's  second  period,  which 
answers  to  social  cooperation,  "  the  rest  which  man  took  after  his  release  from 
the  animal.  .  .  .  The  social  tide  then  sets  in.  The  quest  of  domestic  union  and 
reciprocal  service  comes  to  comfort  him,  and  his  nomadic  and  agricultural  habits 
are  formed."  One  is  reminded  of  Scherer's  argument  for  an  epoch  of  peace  in 
early  Germanic  culture  attested  by  names  which  bear  that  stamp  as  compared 
with  the  later  and  warlike  Gerhards,  (jcrtrudes,  and  the  rest. 

^  It  is  harrlly  necessary  to  warn  against  fallacies  of  illustration.  Even  Bruch- 
mann  goes  astray  when  he  says  the  poem  of  Goethe  is  to  the  primitive  song  as  a 
cherry  tree  in  bloom  is  to  a  cherry  stone  just  planted.  To  primitive  man  the 
primitive  song  was  already  a  tree  in  bloom,  and  his  appreciation  of  it  was  in  line 
with  modern  appreciation  of  Goethe's  poem. 


PURPOSE    AND    METHOD  17 

trials  of  expression  as  in  words  and  song.  One  often  hears 
about  the  lost  arts ;  it  is  quite  possible  that  there  were  arts 
or  modes  of  expression  used  by  primitive  man  for  which  one 
can  find  no  analogy  to-day  either  among  men  of  culture  or 
in  savage  tribes.  There  are  rudimentary  growths  in  litera- 
ture, and  these  must  be  taken  into  account  just  as  the  man 
of  science  considers  the  nails  or  the  hair  or  even  the  often- 
discussed  vermiform  appendix.  The  pineal  gland,  which 
Descartes  finally  chose  as  the  scene  of  that  mysterious  pas- 
sage between  soul  and  matter  demanded  by  his  system  of 
philosophy,  has  been  recently  explained  to  be  all  that  is  left 
of  an  eye  in  the  top  of  the  head.  This  may  be  a  true  account 
of  the  pineal  gland,  or  a  false  account ;  but  no  competent 
naturaUst  will  assert  that  civilized  man  has  all  the  bodily 
functions  which  he  had  at  that  remote  period  in  question. 
So,  too,  with  certain  possible  distorted  survivals  in  poetry  of 
forms  of  emotional  expression  now  unknown  ;  it  is  wrong 
to  deny  them,  and  it  is  perilous  to  assert  them  unless  cumula- 
tive evidence  of  many  kinds  can  estabHsh  the  probability. 
Again,  for  the  first  of  these  two  warnings,  it  is  unfair  to  set 
up  the  Australian  black  fellow  or  the  Andaman  islander,^ 
with  his  "  primitive"  tools,  dress,  habits,  and  then,  by  a  forc- 
ing of  the  adjective,  bid  us  look  at  our  primitive  ancestor.  No 
one  denies  the  value  of  ethnological  evidence ;  Thucydides 
himself  declared  that  barbarous  nations  gave  one  a  good  idea 
of  what  civilized  nations  had  been  ;  accounts  of  savage  life 
have  the  enormous  advantage  of  coming  close  to  the  con- 
ditions of  primitive  life ;  but  they  do  not  give  us  the  infallible 
description  of  primitive  man  himself,  and  it  is  an  illicit  pro- 
cess to  transfer  a  quality  from    savage  to  ancestor,  to   say 

1  Or,  indeed,  any  one  tribe  of  human  beings.  Even  in  the  very  beginning 
of  human  activity,  that  activity  was,  as  now,  conditioned  by  the  environment, 
and  there  were  doubtless  several  types  of  primitive  existence.  Evidently,  then, 
there  could  have  been  different  types  of  social  union  even  at  the  outset  of  social 

pr.  -.rrfss. 


1 8  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

that  man  at  the  dawn  of  history  was  like  this  belated  speci- 
men, and  that  tribes  from  whose  loins  sprang  dominant  races, 
races  which  fought,  and  spoiled,  and  set  up  civilizations  now 
vanished  from  almost  every  kind  of  record,  can  be  recon- 
structed, in  each  feature  of  mind  and  body,  by  a  study  of 
peoples  long  ago  shunted  upon  the  bypaths  of  progress. 
Mr.  Spencer  was  one  of  the  first  to  protest  against  this  abuse 
of  ethnology.^  Professor  Grosse,^  on  the  other  hand,  makes 
a  strong  and  candid  effort  to  meet  and  minimize  the  objec- 
tions to  an  assumption  upon  which  his  whole  study  of 
primitive  art  depends.  He  asserts  that  arguments  in  opposi- 
tion rest  on  the  theory  of  degradation,  and  he  denies  that 
degradation  has  taken  place,  pointing  to  the  remarkable  uni- 
formity of  culture  conditions  in  the  various  tribes  which  he 
regards  as  primitive.  But  it  is  clear  that  one  does  not  need 
the  theory  of  degradation  to  make  good  the  point  which  has 
just  been  urged.  Grant  that  these  savage  tribes  have  not 
degenerated  ;  they  have  certainly  failed,  in  every  important 
particular,  to  progress ;  they  are  stunted  ;  and  they  compare 
with  that  primitive  being  who  held  the  destinies  of  culture 
in  his  hand,  who  pressed  forward,  wrought  and  fought,  and 
sang  the  while  of  what  he  did,  somewhat  as  a  dwarf  idiot  of 
forty  compares  with  a  healthy  child  of  four.  More  than  this. 
Long  stagnation,  while  it  cannot  push  culture  to  new  habits, 
may  well  complicate  and  stiffen  the  old  habits  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  latter  state  of  them  comes  quite  out  of  analogy 
with  the  beginnings.  For  example,  the  festal  dances  of  the 
savage  are  often  intricate  to  a  degree,  requiring  real  erudition 
in  the  teacher,  and  infinite  patience  and  skill  in  the  disciple. 
Now  it  needs  no  advance  in  culture,  no  change  in  the  form 

^  Principles  of  Sociology,  3d  (American)  ed.,  I.  93,  96.  Dr.  Eugen  Wolff  is 
equally  severe  on  the  abuse,  "  Vorstudien  zur  Poetik,"  in  the  Zst.f.  Litteraturgesch., 
VI.  426. 

2  Anfdnge  der  Kunst,  pp.  33  ff.  For  falling  off  in  civilization  among  Africans 
and  others,  see  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  I.  46,  48. 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  I9 

of  production,  which  is  Grosse's  test  for  culture,  to  make 
this  dance  progress  from  wild  rhythmic  leapings  in  a  festal 
throng  to  the  rigid  form  it  has  found  under  the  care  of  cer- 
tain experts.  The  earliest  dancers  and  the  latest  dancers, 
communal  and  artistic,  may  have  lived  the  same  tribal  life 
and  got  their  food  by  the  same  kind  of  hunting,  the  same 
rude  gathering  of  plants.  In  fact,  startling  as  the  assertion 
may  seem,  and  however  it  may  run  counter  to  this  convenient 
law  that  the  degree  of  culture  depends  on  the  form  of  pro- 
duction, and  that  the  work  of  art  depends  on  the  degree  of 
culture,  it  is  nevertheless  highly  probable  that  a  certain  com- 
bination of  dance  and  song  used  among  the  Faroe  islanders 
about  a  century  ago,  and  recorded  by  a  Danish  clergyman 
who  saw  it,  is  of  a  far  more  primitive  type  than  sundry 
laborious  dances  of  savage  tribes  who  are  assumed  to  be 
quite   primitive  in  their  culture. 

Granted  the  need  to  use  the  analogy  with  caution,  it  is  well 
to  note  how  wary  one  must  be  in  dealing  with  the  evidence 
itself.  The  warning  may  be  brought  home  by  an  illustration 
somewhat  out  of  the  beaten  track  of  ethnological  material.^ 
Nearly  a  century  ago,  Dr.  Samuel  L.  Mitchill,  United  States 
senator  from  New  York,  was  "  a  sort  of  permanent  chairman 
of  the  committee  on  Indian  affairs  "  ;  and  he  gives  an  account 
of  a  song  "  in  the  Osage  tongue,"  which  was  sung  at  his 
house  in  Washington,  "  translated  into  French  by  Mr. 
Choteau,  the  interpreter,  and  rendered  into  English  immedi- 
ately, January  i,  1806."  It  is  well  to  see  what  came  of  this 
process  in  the  shape  of  the  song  "  On  War." 

Say,  warriors,  why,  when  arms  are  sung, 
And  dwell  on  every  native  tongue. 

Do  thoughts  of  Death  intrude  ? 
Why  weep  the  common  lot  of  all  ? 
Why  think  that  you  yourselves  may  fall, 

Pursuing  or  pursued  ? 

^  Transactions  and  Collections  of  the  American  Antiquarian  Society,  Worcester, 
Mass.,  1820,  I.  313  ff. 


20  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

There  is  more  in  the  same  pensive  but  smooth  and  elegant 
vein ;  and  one  regrets  to  learn  that  this  excellent  Wanapaska, 
who  would  have  pleased  Chateaubriand,  "  died  suddenly  .  .  . 
a  few  nights  after  having  sung  this  song  to  the  translator,"  — 
who,  however,  unblushingly  lived  on.  But  he  could  be  truth- 
ful on  occasion,  this  translator,  and  he  tells  the  truth  about 
two  Cherokee  songs  of  friendship  which  may  not  have  seemed 
capable  of  conversion  into  tender  English  monody.  Here  is 
silly  sooth.  The  songs,  one  is  told,  "  consist  of  but  one  sen- 
tence each  with  a  chorus.  Nothing  of  greater  length  seems 
to  exist  among  "  the  Cherokees.  "  They  repeat  the  song  and 
chorus  until  they  are  tired.  The  words  of  both  were  written 
for  me  ^  by  Mr.  Hicks,  a  Cherokee  of  the  half  blood,  with  his 
own  hand,  both  original  and  version.  .  .  .  Neither  among 
the  Osages  nor  the  Cherokees  could  there  be  found  a  single 
poetical  or  musical  sentim.ent  founded  on  the  tender  passion 
between  the  sexes.  Though  often  asked,  they  produced  no 
song  of  love."  ^  The  two  songs  follow,  —  they  have  the  same 
chorus  and  belong  together,  —  with  interlinear  translation  :  — - 

Can,  nal,  li,  eh,  ne-was-tu. 

A  friend  you  resemble. 

Chorus — Yai,  ne,  noo,  way.     E,  noo,  way,  ha. 

Ti,  nai,  tau,  na,  cla,  ne-was-tu. 
Brothers  I  think  we  are. 

And  the  chorus,  as  before.  Now  even  the  humblest  student 
of  poetry  can  sift  all  this  evidence,  on  the  face  of  it  equally 
valuable  throughout,  and  find  that  a  part  of  it  is  worse  than 
worthless,  while  another  part  is  of  real  value  ;  in  many  cases, 
however,  the  task  is  difficult,  and  this  for  two  reasons.  Either 
the  missionaries,  explorers,  travellers,  give  only  a  partial 
account,  or  again,  they  give  accounts  of  a  misleading  sort,  if 
not  actually  untrue.     For  the  former  case,  we  may  take  Ellis 

^  In  1805.  2  gee  below,  on  the  Darwinian  theory  of  lyric. 


PURPOSE   AND   iMETHOD  21 

and  his  description  of  a  New  Zealand  dance.  ^  "  Several  of 
their  public  dances  seemed  immoral  in  their  tendency ;  but  in 
general  they  were  distinguished  by  the  violent  gestures  and 
deafening  vociferations  of  the  performers."  And  that  is  all. 
It  is  enough  for  the  purposes  of  the  book,  but  it  is  not  enough 
for  the  student  of  poetry.  Worse  yet  is  the  tendency  to  state 
savage  thought,  savage  habits,  in  terms  of  civilization,  and  so 
give  a  notion  never  true  and  often  false.  When,  for  example, 
one  is  told  ^  that  in  the  South  Sea  islands  there  are  poets  who 
retire  at  certain  seasons  from  the  world  in  order  to  live  in 
solitude  and  compose  their  poems,  one  is  surprised  at  this 
notion  of  poetical  composition  among  races  where  the  great 
mass  of  evidence  is  for  improvised  songs  of  a  line  or  two, 
with  eternal  chorus  —  savage  pattern  everywhere  —  and  with 
accompanying  dance.  However,  here  is  the  evidence,  and  it 
must  be  taken  with  the  rest.  Presently  comes  an  actual 
song,3  a  pensive  song,  by  one  of  these  bards  and  akin  to  the 
Osage  outburst  translated  by  Dr.  Mitchill :  — 

Death  is  easy. 

To  live,  what  boots  it  ? 

Death  is  peace. 

Is  this  a  Fijian  Schopenhauer,  or  rather  Leopardi;  or  does 
it  mean  contact  with  civilized  thought  and  with  Christian 
hymns  ?  Before  one  accepts  this  as  outcome  of  "  primitive  " 
poetic  conditions,  one  must  bring  it  into  line  with  the  poetry 
from  such  sources  on  which  all  evidence  is  agreed  ;  at  once 
the  bard  and  his  ditty  fall  under  strong  suspicion.  Witty  pro- 
verbial verses  found  in  half-civilized  tradition,  say  among  the 
Finns,*  get  the  same  label  of  "primitive,"  until  one  appeals 

^  Polynesian  Researches,  American  ed.,  III.,  Chap.  XII, 
2  Waitz-Gerland,  Anthropolope  der  Naturvolker,  VI.  85. 
8  Ibid.,  VI.  606  ff. 
*  See  R.  M.  Meyer,  Altgermanische  Poesie,  p.  434. 


22  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

to  the  chronological  sense  of  fitness,  and  to  other  kinds  of 

evidence :  — 

Praise  no  new  horse  till  to-morrow, 
No  wife  till  two  years  are  over, 
No  wife's  brother  till  the  third  year, 
Praise  thyself  not  while  thou  livest  ! 

At  this  rate  the  letters  of  some  Lord  Chesterfield  to  his 
son  will  yet  be  reconstructed  for  the  epoch  of  our  hairy- 
ancestors  on  the  tree  platform  It  is  clear  that  the  great 
body  of  ethnological  evidence,  unequal  in  its  parts,  and  in 
sad  need  of  sifting  and  revision,  has  something  of  that  uncer- 
tain quality  as  an  ally  in  argument  which  Tom  Nash  imputed 
to  "law,  logic,  and  the  Switzers."  They  could  be  hired  to 
fight,  he  said,  for  anybody. 

Safety  lies  in  making  one  kind  of  evidence  control  another 
kind,  and  in  reckoning  only  with  the  carefully  balanced 
result.  What  evidence  is  there  that  can  control  the  evi- 
dence of  ethnology .''  Philology,  despite  its  overweening 
claims,  is  said  to  be  unavailing ;  it  may  reveal  verbal  pro- 
cesses which  belong  to  prehistoric  times ;  but,  as  J.  F.  Mc- 
Lennan ^  remarked,  "  in  the  sciences  of  law  and  society, 
old  means  not  old  in  chronology  but  in  structure.  .  .  .  The 
preface  of  general  history  must  be  compiled  from  the 
materials  presented  by  barbarism."  Yet  McLennan  himself 
declares  that  "a  really  primitive  people  nowhere  exists,"  and 
so  puts  a  great  restriction  on  the  use  of  the  material  he  has 
just  praised.  Can  history  be  of  help .-'  "  The  study  of  the 
science  of  art,"  says  Professor  Grosse,^  "should  not  turn  to 
history  or  to  prehistory.  History  knows  no  primitive  peo- 
ples." Archaeology,  he  thinks,  is  as  powerless ;  the  sole 
refuge  is  in  ethnology,  for  it  shows  us  "  a  whole  series  of 
primitive  peoples  in  the  full  light  of  the  present."     But  this 

^  Studies  in  Ancient  History,  First  Series,  new  ed.,  1886;  see  pp.  2,  35. 
2  Anf'dnge  der  Kunst,  pp.  21  ff.,  32  ff. 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  23 

full  light,  now  and  then,  has  bhnded  even  Professor  Grosse ; 
and  there  is  a  kind  of  history,  not  direct,  indeed,  not  a  mat- 
ter of  clear  record,  but  still  often  as  valuable  as  ethnological 
evidence,  which  has  help  of  its  own  for  the  student  of  primi- 
tive institutions  both  by  way  of  control  and  by  way  of  sug- 
gestive facts.  One  of  the  first  men  who  went  about  the 
reconstruction  of  prehistorical  times  by  a  sober  application 
of  the  "  known  principles  of  human  nature "  to  the  facts 
offered  by  ethnology  and  sociology,  sciences  then  unknown 
by  name,  was  Adam  Smith  ;  in  the  highly  interesting  account 
of  him  written  by  Dugald  Stewart  and  published  as  intro- 
duction to  the  Essays,^  the  name  of  ^^  theoretical  or  coitjecttiral 
history  "  is  given  to  "  this  species  of  philosophical  investigation 
which  has  no  appropriated  name  in  our  language."  Stewart 
is  speaking  of  Smith's  essay  on  the  origin  of  speech,^  and 
compares  it  with  the  famous  pioneer  work  of  Montesquieu 
and  others  in  a  related  field  of  study,  remarking  on  the  way 
in  which  "  casual  observations  of  illiterate  travellers  and 
navigators  "  are  combined  into  "  a  philosophical  commentary 
on  the  history  of  law  and  of  manners."  These  "casual 
observations "  have  risen  of  late  to  almost  absolute  power, 
and  "known  principles  of  human  nature"  are  out  of  office. 
Now  it  is  true  that  one  must  be  chary  in  the  application  of 
such  "  known  principles  "  to  the  facts  from  which  one  has 
to  construct  one's  idea  of  human  nature  itself,  a  process 
close  to  the  vicious  circle ;  but  there  are,  nevertheless,  certain 
general  controlling  ideas  to  which  appeal  should  be  made 
when  one  has  to  set  a  value  on  a  given  bit  of  evidence.  A 
controlling  idea  of  this  sort  is  the  sense  of  literary  evolution, 
an  idea  based  on  known  literary  facts,  and  quite  valid  as  test 
for  alleged  facts  which  are  brought  forward  as  evidence  in 

1  London,  1795,  pp.  xlii  ff. 

^  Nearer  to  the  present  subject  are  Smith's  excellent  essay  "  Of  the  Imitative 
Arts"  and  the  fragment  "  Of  the  Affinity  between  Music,  Dancing,  and  Poetry." 


24  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

questions  of  prehistoric  stages  of  poetry.  This  sense  of  literary 
evolution,  moreover,  need  be  no  whim  or  freak  of  one's  own 
judgment.  It  is  not  merely  that  one  feels  the  absurdity  of 
those  jingling  platitudes  which  Dr.  Mitchill  fathers  upon  the 
lorn  Wanapaska ;  it  is  the  sense  of  evolution  in  the  expres- 
sion of  emotion  and  of  thought,  a  sense  based  on  experience 
and  due  to  a  competent  process  of  reasoning,  which  tells 
any  person  of  information  that  savages  do  not  make  such  a 
song.  True,  if  a  mass  of  such  evidence  lay  before  one,  and 
it  proved  to  be  of  the  trustworthy  sort,  then  the  controlling 
idea  would  be  driven  off,  and  the  old  sense  of  evolution 
would  be  so  modified  as  to  conform  to  the  new  facts.  But 
this  is  not  the  case. 

The  controlling  idea,  the  sense  of  evolution,  should  be  an 
object  for  the  scholar  in  more  limited  fields  than  heretofore 
have  been  chosen  for  his  work.  It  will  be  found  wise,  hence- 
forth, to  select  a  narrower  path  but  a  more  distant  goal,  a 
smaller  subject  and  a  larger  method,  to  run  down  a  single 
clew,  and  to  run  it,  if  possible,  to  the  end.  Works  on  the 
History  of  Human  Thought,  on  the  History  of  Literature,  of 
Religion,  of  Civilization,  on  Primitive  Culture,  were  great  in 
their  day,  —  and  probably  no  one  book,  apart  from  Darwin's, 
has  had  such  a  wide  and  wholesome  influence  as  that  master- 
piece of  Dr.  E.  B.  Tylor ;  they  initiated,  fixed  the  general 
direction,  were  the  doing  of  genius.  But  the  day  of  dis- 
coveries has  gone  by,  and  colonization,  a  slower  process,  is 
rather  an  affair  of  hard  if  intelligent  work.  Histories,  if  the 
term  will  pass,  are  needed  for  the  different  functions  of 
human  expression  and  human  emotion  itself.  The  whimsical 
Nietzsche  ^  has  called  for  histories  "  of  Love,  of  Avarice,  of 
Envy,  of  Conscience,  of  Piety,  of  Cruelty  "  ;  but  apart  from 
his  notions,  and  for  sober  purposes  of  literary  study,  there  is 
need  for  such  work  as  a  history  of  sentiment,  and  this,  of 

1  Froliliche  Wissejtschaft,  pp.  44  f.     See  also  p.  1 80. 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  25 

course,  should  be  followed  back  on  its  different  lines  of  expres- 
sion. Two  striking  passages  in  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy's  Return 
of  the  Native  may  be  cited  here  as  bearing  on  possibilities  of 
investigation  which  need  not  be  regarded  as  fantastic  or  absurd. 
In  describing  the  face  of  his  hero,  as  one  that  bore  traces  of 
a  mental  struggle,  a  half-formed  query  in  regard  to  the  value 
of  existence,  Mr.  Hardy  contrasts  this  face,  so  common  now 
in  every  walk  of  life,  with  the  countenance  preserved  by 
sculpture  from  an  age  when  no  such  questions  haunted  the 
brain,  and  when,  to  use  his  phrase,  man  "  could  still  revel  in 
the  general  situation."  Even  more  suggestive  is  the  other 
passage,  which  treats  the  change  of  sentiment  in  regard  to 
what  are  called  "  the  beauties  of  nature."  Much  has  been 
said  and  investigated  of  late  on  this  attitude,  ancient  and 
modern,  toward  nature ;  ^  but  there  is  metal  more  attractive 
in  Mr.  Hardy's  introduction  of  Egdon  Heath  as  a  sort  of 
tragic  character  in  his  story,  and  in  his  remark  that  with  the 
saddening  of  life  men  have  turned  more  and  more  from  mere 
gardens  and  green  meadows,  and  have  sought  wild,  rugged 
scenes ;  in  days  to  come,  indeed,  they  may  turn  even  from 
the  barren  coasts  of  the  sea,  from  bleak  mountains,  and  seek 
stretches  of  absolute  desolation,  forbidding,  featureless,  dead, 
to  suit  their  mood  and  give  them  rest  from  the  stress  of  life. 
These  are  hints,  false  or  true,  only  hints ;  but  if  they  can 
so  stir  one  to  look  into  the  seeds  of  time  for  the  sake  of 
mere  prediction,  is  there  not  sober  gain  in  a  reversal  of  this 
process  and  in  a  study  of  the  conditions  and  expressions  of 
sentiment  as  far  back  as  one  can  follow  them  "i  It  is  said 
that  the  absence  and  the  presence  of  personal  sentiment 
respectively  condition    the   poetry  of    France  that  precedes 

1  Compare  Ribot's  idea  of  what  he  calls  the  aesthetic  conquest  of  nature, 
Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  p.  345,  with  Professor  Patten's  remorselessly  economic 
theory  that  appreciation  of  these  things  depends  on  cheap  and  warm  woollen 
underclothing. 


26  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Villon  and  the  poetry  that  comes  after  him ;  what  of  the 
larger  field,  poetry  itself,  with  regard  to  this  important  quality 
in  emotional  expression  ?  Can  one  do  for  poetry  what  a 
recent  writer  ^  has  done  for  civic  life  ?  Speaking  of  altruism, 
and  noting  the  original  absence  of  sentiment,  he  constructs 
a  curve,  or,  as  he  calls  it,  a  gradation,  "  the  first  word  of  which 
is  selfishness  and  the  last  public  sentiment."  What  curves, 
now,  can  be  constructed  in  poetry  which  shall  prove  of  value 
as  showing  a  controlling  idea  and  warranting  a  sense  of  evolu- 
tion ?  Clearly,  these  controlling  ideas  in  a  history  of  literature 
must  stand  chiefly  upon  the  facts  of  literature,  and  the  sense 
of  evolution  must  be  based  upon  a  study  of  literary  changes 
and  growth,  the  play  and  result  of  such  elements  as  have  just 
now  been  described.  The  sense  of  evolution  in  literature  is 
akin  to  the  genealogical  point  of  view  lately  urged  upon 
critics  by  M.  Brunetiere,^  but  it  is  not  the  same  thing ;  with 
him  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  apphed  to  hterature  or  to  art 
as  a  safe  guide  through  its  chronology,  as  a  clew  to  its  prog- 
ress and  retrogressions,  as  a  discovery  of  the  relations  which 
a  genius  bears  to  those  who  went  before  him  and  to  those 
who  follow,  and  as  a  test  of  the  valid  and  the  permanent  in 
art.  The  appHcation  of  the  sense  of  evolution  now  to  be 
considered  has  a  far  wider  range  and  must  lead  in  time  to 
wider  conquests.  For  example,  if  one  will  choose  some 
particular  characteristic  of  human  nature  and  will  essay,  by 
the  aid  of  literature  and  the  arts,  to  follow  back  the  manifesta- 
tions of  it  to  a  point  where  all  records  and  traces  of  it  cease, 
one  will  have  a  history  of  this  characteristic,  —  and  one  will 
have  something  more.    There  will  be  not  only  the  actual  record 

1  Pulszky,  The  Theory  of  I.aiv  and  Civil  Society,  London,  l888,  p.  107. 
"  Selfishness,"  by  the  way,  is  not  a  good  name  for  the  (|uality  he  has  in  mind;  but 
the  method  is  relevant. 

'•^  "  La  doctrine  evolutive  et  I'histoire  de  la  litterature,"  RcTue  des  deux  Mondes, 
15  Fev.  1898.  .See  especially  pp.  889,  892  ff.  See  also  his  Evolution  des  Genres, 
particularly  the  chapter  on  Taine. 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  27 

made  up  from  a  series  of  observations  which  form  a  dotted 
line  from  furthest  historical  past  to  present,  but  the  dots  of  this 
line,  the  line  itself,  will  often  form  a  curve  which  points  either 
to  a  general  gain  or  to  a  general  loss  of  the  characteristic  in 
question.  Or,  if  it  is  a  case  where  one  cannot  speak  with 
exactness  of  a  loss  or  a  gain  in  the  characteristic  itself,  the 
curve  will  show  loss  or  gain  in  any  given  form  by  which  this 
characteristic  has  made  itself  known.  Here,  in  other  words, 
is  a  curve  of  relative  tendencies ;  and  the  knowledge  of  such 
a  curve  not  only  gives  us  that  sense  of  evolution  to  which  refer- 
ence has  been  made,  but  justifies  us,  after  careful  study  and  test- 
ing of  these  dotted  facts,  in  a  bold  leap  from  the  known  to  the 
unknown.  If  the  characteristic  in  question,  from  the  point 
where  it  comes  into  view  at  the  beginning  of  records,  shows 
a  constant  curve  of  increase  or  of  decrease,  one  is  justified  in 
making  a  fairly  definite  statement  about  it  in  prehistoric 
times.  Now  this  is  not  the  evolutionary  doctrine  championed 
by  M.  Brunetiere  in  literary  research,  for  the  reason  that  it 
is  not  dealing  with  poets  and  poems,  but  with  poetry,  or 
rather  with  the  elements  of  poetry.  To  give  a  practical 
illustration,  it  is  found  that  ethnological  evidence  puts  in 
strong  relief  the  almost  exclusive  and  certainly  overwhelming 
frequency  of  choral  singing  among  rudest  savage  tribes.  If, 
now,  one  takes  a  modern  popular  ballad  and  seeks  to  follow 
it  back  in  such  a  way  as  to  join  it,  as  the  end  of  a  long  line 
of  survivals,  to  these  primitive  choral  songs,  one  falls  at  once 
into  confusion  and  halts  sooner  or  later  before  insuperable 
barriers.  Apart  from  the  controversy  about  artistic  or  com- 
munal origin,  apart  from  the  theories  of  the  epic,  of  the  cantc- 
fable,  what  not,  it  is  out  of  the  range  of  possible  things  to 
trace  ballad  or  folksong,  as  such,  back  to  a  primitive  form. 
Yet  it  seems  to  have  occurred  to  no  one  that  the  way  to  treat 
the  ballad  for  historic,  comparative,  and  genetic  purposes  is 
to  separate  it  into  its  elements,  and  to  follow  these  elements 


28  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

back  to  the  point  where  they  vanish  in  the  mists  of  unrecorded 
time.  Such  elements  —  and,  unHke  the  ballad  itself,  they  can 
be  traced  —  are  the  fact  of  singing,  the  fact  of  dancing,  the 
fact  of  universal  improvisation,  the  fact  of  a  predominant 
chorus  or  refrain.  Are  these  elements,  as  far  back  as  one 
can  trace  them,  stronger,  more  insistent,  as  one  approaches 
primitive  conditions .''  What  is  the  curve  of  evolution  ?  Add 
to  it  the  evidence  of  ethnology,  and  the  conclusions  of  sociol- 
ogy, in  regard  to  the  composition  and  character  of  the  early 
social  group  :  here  are  materials  which  are  solid  enough  to 
bear  the  weight  of  certain  and  definite  conclusions  in  regard 
to  the  communal  element  in  earliest  verse.  Again,  there  is 
another  curve  to  consider.  The  poem  of  our  day  is  mainly 
individual  and  artistic  ;  how  far  back,  and  in  what  degree, 
waxing,  waning,  or  stationary,  can  these  elements  be  traced, 
and  with  what  ethnological  and  sociological  facts  can  they 
be  confronted  ?  The  differencing  characteristics  of  the  poetry 
of  art,  and  those  of  the  poetry  which  is  rightly  or  wrongly 
called  communal,  must  be  studied  for  themselves  and  traced 
back  in  their  curves  of  evolution  in  order  to  ascertain  what 
part  they  played  in  the  beginnings  of  the  art.  And  thus,  too, 
the  question  must  be  answered,  a  question  neither  idle  nor 
without  wide  sweep  of  interest,  whether  poetry  has  been  one 
and  the  same  element  of  human  life  from  the  outset,  under 
varying  circumstances,  indeed,  but  under  fixed  conditions  and 
with  stable  elements,  or  whether  the  conditions  and  the 
elements  are  now  different  from  those  which  obtained  at  the 
start. 

The  method,  then,  of  this  attempt  to  study  the  beginnings 
of  poetry  is  not  to  transfer  outright  the  facts  and  conditions 
of  savage  life,  result  of  ethnological  investigation,  to  primi- 
tive song,  not  to  take  a  supposed  "  popular "  or  communal 
poem  of  modern  tradition  and  essay  a  somewhat  similar 
transfer,  but  rather  to  use  the  evidence  of  ethnology  in  con- 


PURPOSE   AND   METHOD  29 

nection  with  the  progress  of  poetry  itself,  as  one  can  trace  it 
in  the  growth  or  decay  of  its  elements.  The  facts  of  ethno- 
logical research  have  been  largely  digested  and  can  be  easily 
used.  The  elements  of  poetry,  in  the  sense  here  indicated, 
and  combined  with  sociological  considerations,  have  never 
been  studied  for  the  purpose  of  determining  poetic  evolu- 
tion ;  and  in  this  study  lie  both  the  intention  of  the  present 
book  and  whatever  modest  achievement  its  writer  can  hope 
to  attain.  Before,  however,  this  actual  study  is  begun,  two 
propositions  must  be  estabhshed :  the  writer  must  prove  that 
what  he  takes  as  poetry  is  poetry  in  fact ;  and,  as  was  hinted 
just  above,  he  must  show  a  clear  title  for  his  use  of  the  terms 
"  communal "  and  "  artistic." 


CHAPTER   II 
RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL  FACT   OF   POETRY 

For  the  purposes  of  this  book,  poetry  is  rhythmic  utter- 
ance, rhythmic  speech,  with  mainly  emotional  origin.  One 
must  not  write  a  book  on  poetry  without  essaying  that  iter 
tenebricosum  of  a  definition  —  a  definition,  too,  that  will 
define,  and  not  land  the  reader  in  a  mere  maze  of  words. 
"Rhythmic  speech"  is  a  short  journey,  puts  one  on  solid 
ground  at  the  end,  and  brings  about  no  doublings  and  eva- 
sions in  the  subsequent  path  of  investigation.  It  says  what 
Robert  Browning  says  in  his  summary  of  his  art :  — 

"  What  does  it  all  mean,  poet  ?  —  Well, 
Your  brains  beat  into  rhythm.   .   .  ." 

By  rhythmic  must  be  understood  a  regular  recurrence  which 
clearly  sets  off  such  speech  from  the  speech  of  prose ;  and 
by  speech  is  meant  chiefly  the  combination  of  articulate 
words,  although  inarticulate  sounds  may  often  express  the 
emotion  of  the  moment  and  so  pass  as  poetry.  The  propor- 
tionate intellectual  control  of  emotion  in  this  utterance  is  a 
matter  of  human  development,  and  largely  conditions  the 
course  of  poetry  itself.  We  agree,  then,  to  call  by  the  name 
of  poetry  that  form  of  art  which  uses  rhythm  to  attain  its 
ends,  just  as  we  call  by  the  name  of  flying  that  motion  which 
certain  animals  attain  by  the  use  of  wings  ;  that  the  feelings 
roused  by  poetry  can  be  roused  by  unrhythmic  order  of 
words,  and  that  rhythmic  order  of  words  is  often  deplorably 
bad  art,  or  "unpoetic,"  have  as  little  to  do  with  the  case  as 
the  fact  that  a  greyhound  speeding  over  the  grass  gives  the 

30 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        31 

spectator  quite  the  exhilaration  and  sense  of  lightness  and 
grace  which  is  roused  by  the  flight  of  a  bird,  and  the  fact 
that  an  awkward  fowl  makes  itself  ridiculous  in  trying  to  fly, 
have  to  do  with  the  general  proposition  that  flying  is  a  mat- 
ter of  wings.  A  vast  amount  of  human  utterance  has  been 
rhythmic ;  one  undertakes  to  tell  the  story  of  its  beginnings. 
With  such  a  definition  the  task  is  plain  though  hard ;  let  go 
this  definition,  and  there  is  no  firm  ground  under  one's  feet. 
The  patron  and  the  critic  of  poetry,  to  be  sure,  must  make 
deeper  and  wider  demands ;  from  the  critical  point  of  view 
one  must  find  the  standard  qualities  of  excellence  to  serve  as 
test  in  any  given  case,  one  must  ascertain  what  is  representa- 
tive, best,  highest ;  poetry  for  the  critic  has  its  strength 
measured  by  the  strongest  and  not  by  the  weakest  link  in 
the  chain.  From  the  aesthetical  point  of  view,  again,  poetry 
must  be  defined  in  terms  of  the  purely  poetic  impulse.  On 
the  other  hand,  any  comparative  and  sociological  study  must 
find  a  definition  wide  enough  for  the  whole  poetic  product, 
whether  of  high  or  of  low  quality,  whether  due  to  this  or  to  that 
emotion.  It  needs  a  simple  and  obvious  test  for  the  mate- 
rial. Now  as  a  matter  of  fact,  all  writers  on  poetry  take 
rhythm  for  granted  until  some  one  asks  why  it  is  necessary ; 
whereupon  considerable  discussion,  and  the  protest  signed  by 
a  respectable  minority,  but  a  minority  after  all,  that  rhythm 
is  not  an  essential  condition  of  the  poetic  art.  This  discus- 
sion, as  every  one  knows,  has  been  lively  and  at  times  bitter ; 
a  patient  and  comprehensive  review  of  it  in  a  fairly  impartial 
spirit  has  led  to  the  conclusion,  first,  that  no  test  save 
rhythm  has  been  proposed  which  can  be  put  to  real  use, 
even  in  theory,  not  to  mention  the  long  reaches  of  a  histori- 
cal and  comparative  study ;  secondly,  that  all  defenders  of 
the  poem  in  prose  are  more  or  less  contradictory  and  incon- 
sistent, making  confusion  between  theory  and  practice ;  and 
thirdly,  that  advocates  of  a  rhythmic  test,  even  in  abstract 


32  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

definition,  seem  to  have  the  better  of  the  argument.  In- 
deed, one  might  simply  point  to  the  actual  use  of  the  word 
"  poetry,"  and  be  done.  However  the  student  and  col- 
lector may  proclaim  the  rights  of  prose  to  count  as  poetry, 
his  history,  his  anthology,  shows  no  prose  at  all,  and  he 
meekly  follows  in  practice  the  definition  against  which,  in 
theory,  he  was  so  fain  to  strive  and  cry.  Of  this,  one  ex- 
ample, but  a  very  remarkable  example.  Baudelaire,  in  the 
preface  to  his  Ponns  in  Prose,  speaks  of  one  Bertrand  ^  as 
his  master  in  this  art,  and  of  a  book,  Gaspard  de  la  Niiity 
as  its  masterpiece.  This  book,^  praised  highly  by  Sainte- 
Beuve,  this  fantaisie  a  la  nianih'e  de  Rembrandt  et  de  Calloty 
as  its  subordinate  title  runs,  makes  occasion  for  a  very  bold 
assertion,  and  apparently  for  a  great  innovation,  by  one  of 
the  editors  of  a  collection  of  French  poetry.^  "  To  admit  a 
prose  writer,"  he  says,  "into  a  poetic  anthology  needs  to  be 
explained.  It  is  certain  there  are  poets  in  prose  just  as  there 
are  prosers  in  verse," — the  dear  old  cry,  the  dear  old  half- 
truth  !  Now  Bertrand  is  "  poet  not  only  by  his  sentiment, 
not  only  by  the  pomp  and  sublimity  of  his  thought,  .  .  .  but 
by  the  very  art  itself  "  which  he  lavishes  upon  this  poetic 
prose.  True,  he  wrote  verses  also  in  his  Gaspard ;  but  his 
main  work  is  an  artistic  marvel  of  prose.  "  Louis  Bertrand 
prosodie  la  prose.  .  .  ."  Well,  a  fine  defence  for  the  prose- 
poet;  and  one  turns  to  the  selections  for  an  example  of  the 
poetic  prose,  not  only  "main  work,"  but  very  rare  work  of 
the  writer,  whose  book  is  most  difficult  to  obtain.  And  what 
are  the  selections  from  the  prose-poet }  Two  poems  in  the 
most  incorrigible  verse  !     A  sonnet,  a  ballade :  — 


1  "  Louis  Bertrand,  qui  signait  en  bon  romantique  Aloisius  Bertrand,"  1807- 
1841,  born  at  Cera  in  Piedmont. 

2  Now  very  rare.     It  appeared,  edited  by  M.  Pavie,  in  1842.     See  Sainte-Beuve, 
Portraits  Litteraires,  II.  343  ff. 

*  C.  Asselincau  in  I.es  Poetes  Fran(ais,  Tom.  IV.,  1862,  p.  697. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   33 

"  O  Dijon,  la  fille 
Des  glorieux  dues, 
Qui  portes  bequille 
Dans  tes  ans  caducs,"  — 

a  kind  of  refrain,  and  with  the  rime  in  -ille  running  through 
all  the  eight  stanzas ;  and  there  is  no  prose  at  all !  Wozii 
der  Ldrm  ?  Why  this  thunder  in  the  index  ?  Why  "  admit 
a  prose-writer  into  a  poetic  anthology,"  with  all  this  ceremony, 
only  to  ignore  his  prose  and  to  print  his  verse  ?  ^ 

It  is  to  be  noted,  first  of  all,  that  in  ignoring  the  test  of 
rhythm,  so  as  to  admit  great  men  of  letters  like  Plato  and 
Bacon  to  the  poets'  guild,  the  advocates  of  prose  fail  to  set 
up  any  other  satisfactory  test.  Sidney  and  Shelley,  Arcadi- 
ans both  who  said  noble  things  about  their  calling,  are  reck- 
oned as  defenders  of  the  poem  in  prose.  As  to  the  younger, 
all  men  must  feel  more  deeply  and  more  lovingly  about 
poetry,  for  the  reading  of  his  essay  on  that  art  which  "  re- 
deems from  decay  the  visitations  of  the  divinity  in  man," 
memorable  words  indeed ;  but  his  more  exact  definition  de- 
clares poetry  to  be  "the  expression  of  the  imagination." 
Nothing  is  said  here  of  rhythm,  for  the  good  reason  that 
while  rhythm  can  be  praised  in  its  own  place,  it  must  not  be 
a  bar  to  claims  which  Shelley  and  his  fellows  deem  impor- 
tant. Yet  how  tender  and  how  inconsistent  is  his  rejection 
of  the  rhythmic  test !  Rhythm  is  "  created  by  that  imperial 
faculty  whose  throne  is  curtained  within  the  invisible  nature 
of  man  "  ;  and  "  the  language  of  poets  has  ever  affected  a 
sort  of  uniform  and  harmonious  recurrence  of  sound,  witJwiit 
which  it  were  not  poetry  T"^     Well,  is  this  not  to  set  up  rhythm 

1  Sainte-Beuve  gives  four  specimens  of  Bertrand's  "  poems  "  in  prose.  Brune- 
tiere,  Questions  de  Critique,  p.  202,  quotes  with  approval  Gautier's  words :  "  Vou- 
loir  separer  le  vers  de  la  poesie,  c'est  une  folie  moderne  qui  ne  tend  k  rien  moins 
que  I'aneantissement  de  I'art  lui-meme." 

-  Italics  not  in  Shelley's  essay.  —  For  these  very  sentences,  so  poetical  in  their 
prose,  see  Hegel  (on  the  poetic  sentence),  Aesthetik,  III.  248  f. 

D 


34  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

as  a  test  ?  No,  for  Bacon,  as  well  as  Plato,  is  to  be  counted 
with  the  bards  ;  and  how  shall  this  be  done  save  by  condemn- 
ing "the  distinction  between  poets  and  prose  writers  as  a 
vulgar  error,"  and  by  a  widening  of  rhythm,  so  that  it  shall 
have  no  bounds,  no  necessary  "  traditional  forms  "  ?  Thus 
Plato  and  Bacon  come  in,  and  all  hope  of  a  definite,  working 
test  of  poetry  goes  out.  Sidney,  again,  had  in  his  day  this 
mingled  tenderness  and  contempt  for  rhythm.  "  Rhyming 
and  versing  "  no  more  make  a  poet  than  a  long  gown  maketh 
an  advocate ;  but  the  "  senate  of  poets  hath  cJioscn  verse  as 
their  fittest  raim.ejtty  Presently,  however,  the  exquisite 
reason  for  prose  in  poetry  is  clear,  when  Sidney  calls  Xen- 
ophon's  Cyrop(2dia  "an  absolute  heroical  poem."  So,  too, 
there  is  a  saving  clause,  which,  by  the  way,  nobody  denies 
in  its  simple  form,  in  Ben  Jonson's  well-known  deliverance ; 
a  poet  "  expresses  the  life  of  man  in  fit  measures,  number, 
and  harmony,"  yet  "not  he  that  writeth  in  measures  only, 
but  that  feigneth  and  formeth  a  fable  and  writes  things  like 
the  truth."  Now  the  test  of  rhythm,  which  Ben  does  not 
really  deny,  will  work  in  practice ;  the  test  of  imagina- 
tion will  not  work.  Shelley,  putting  Plato  with  the  poetic 
sheep,  thrusts  Cicero,  disciple  of  Plato,  among  the  goats 
of  prose.  Sound  criticism,  perhaps ;  but  what  is  the  for- 
mula .''  And  when  one  is  asking,  not  whom  one  shall 
regard  as  a  poet,  —  that  is,  a  great  poet,  —  but  what  one 
shall  regard  as  poetry,  as  material  to  include  in  a  survey 
of  the  rise  and  progress  of  poetry  at  large,  then  the  test 
of  imagination  fails  utterly.  Sidney  was  defending  his  art; 
"  we  are  not  mere  rimers,"  so  he  seems  to  say,  "  the  root 
of  the  matter  is  in  us,  and  we  are  kin  with  the  gods." 
J.  C.  Scaliger,  who  insisted  on  the  test  of  rhythm,  and 
was  called  many  a  pretty  name  for  his  pains,  had  a  science 
of  poetry  in  mind,  a  survey  of  it,  and  cast  about  for  a 
test  that  would  work  on  earth  without  reference  to  celes- 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   35 

tia]  origins.  The  Abbe  Dubos^  was  not  willing  to  think  so 
nobly  of  verse,  and  laid  main  stress  on  style,^ —  always  grant- 
ing, to  be  sure,  the  conventional  test  of  "genius."  Only 
genius  can  unite  in  lofty  degree  within  the  limits  of  one  verse 
that  "poetry  of  style"  and  that  "mechanics  of  poetry  "  which 
go  to  make  up  the  ideal  poem ;  however,  it  is  this  style  that 
serves  as  practical  test.  In  short,  put  genius,  or  even  imagi- 
nation, to  the  practical  trial,  and  confusion  reigns  at  once. 
Shelley  and  many  more  make  a  poet  of  Plato;  Sidney  brings 
in  Xenophon.  Coleridge,^  insisting  that  all  the  parts  of  a 
poem  must  support  "the  purposes  and  known  influences  of 
metrical  arrangement,"  thus  making  rhythm  a  test,  promptly 
says  it  is  not  a  test,  after  all,  for  along  with  Plato,  both  Bishop 
Taylor  and  Burnet  must  be  counted  as  of  the  bards.  Beat- 
tie*  calls  Totn  Jones  and  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  "  thQ 
two  finest  comic  poems,  the  one  epic,  the  other  dramatical, 
now  in  the  world."     Emerson  °  thinks  Thomas  Taylor  the 

Reflexions,  ed.  ^  1770,  I.  508  ff.  A  poem  in  prose  is  like  an  engraving;  all  is 
here  save  colour,  all  is  there  save  verse.  The  Princesse  de  Cleves  and  Telemaqiie 
are  poems.  Does  not  colour  make  the  painting,  though?  Verse  the  poem?  In 
the  next  section  he  prudently  asserts,  "  qu'il  est  inutile  de  disputer  si  la  partie  du 
dessein  et  de  I'e.xpression  est  preferable  a  celle  du  coloris."  It  is  a  matter  of  taste; 
trahit  sua  qitemque  voluptas.  Both  in  poetry  and  painting  "  genius  "  is  the  main 
thing,  —  so  he  had  decided  in  earlier  sections. 

2  "  En  lisant  un  poeme,  nous  regardons  les  instructions  que  nous  y  pouvons 
prendre  comme  I'accessoire.  L'importante  c'est  le  style,  parceque  c'est  du  style 
d'un  poeme  que  depend  le  plaisir  de  son  lecteur." —  I.  303. 

^  In  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  Biographia  Literaria.  He  has  conceded  the 
convenience  of  calling  all  compositions  that  have  "  this  charm  superadded  "  — 
rhythm  and  rime  —  by  the  name  of  poem. 

*  Essays,  Edinburgh,  1776,  p.  296.  "  I  am  of  opinion,"  he  says,  pp.  294  f.,  On 
Poetry  and  Music,  "  that  to  poetry,  verse  is  not  essential.  In  a  prose  work  we 
may  have  the  fable,  the  arrangement,  and  a  great  deal  of  the  pathos  and  language 
of  poetr)';  and  such  a  work  is  certainly  a  poem,  though  "  —  note  the  concession 
—  "perhaps  not  a  perfect  one."  Verse  "is  necessary  to  the  perfection  of  all 
poetry  that  admits  of  it,"  —  and  how,  pray,  is  that  limitation  to  be  adjusted? 
"  Verse  is  to  poetry  what  colours  are  to  painting;"  and,  quoting  Aristotle,  "versi- 
fication is  to  poetry  what  bloom  is  to  the  human  countenance."  Here  are  pribbles 
and  prabbles  enough.  ^  Poetry  and  Imagination. 


36  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Platonist  "  a  better  poet,  or,  perhaps  I  should  say,  a  better 
feeder  to  a  poet,  than  any  man  between  Milton  and  Words- 
worth,"—  excellent  second  thought.  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
he  regards  as  a  poet.  Brought  face  to  face  with  rhythm, 
Emerson  hedges ;  as,  indeed,  all  these  good  folk  do.  Gold- 
smith,^ for  example,  in  an  unacknowledged  essay,  calls  versi- 
fication "  one  of  the  criteria  that  distinguish  poetry  from  prose, 
yet  it  is  not  the  sole  means  of  distinction."  The  Psalms  of 
David,  and  certain  Celtic  fragments  in  prose,  "lay  claim  to 
the  title  of  poetry."  Hazlitt,^  speaking  of  "poetry  in  gen- 
eral," seems  favourable  to  rhythm  as  a  test.  Poetry  "  com- 
bines the  ordinary  use  of  language  with  musical  expression"; 
and  "there  is  a  near  connection  between  music  and  deep- 
rooted  passion.  Mad  people  sing."  Then  the  fear  of  sim- 
plicity gets  hold  upon  him,  of  postman's  rimes  and  the  posy 
in  a  ring ;  "  all  is  not  poetry  that  passes  for  such,"  verse  is 
not  absolutely  the  test ;  and  he  stops  short  of  the  inconsist- 
ency by  saying  there  are  three  works  "  which  come  as  near  to 
poetry  as  possible  without  absolutely  being  so ;  namely,  the 
Pilgrifn's  Progress,  Robinson  Crusoe^  and  the  Tales  of  Boc- 
caccio^  Such  works  are  "poetry  in  kind,  and  generally  Jit 
to  become  so  in  name  by  being  ^married  to  immortal  verse.'  " 
Bagehot*  is  quite  as  cautious;  "the  exact  line,"  he  says, 
"  which  separates  grave  novels  in  verse  like  Aylmer^s  Field 
or  Enoch  Arden  from  grave  novels  not  in  verse  like  Silas 
Marner  and  Adam  Bede,  we  own  we  cannot  draw  with  any 

1  Works,  ed.  1854,  III.  309. 

"^  As  preface  to  his  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets. 

8  M.  E.  M.  de  Vogiie  has  other  views.  To  him  Robinson  Crusoe  is  "  un  bon 
traite  de  psychologic  historique  sur  un  peuple,"  —  an  historic  psychology  of  the 
English  race.  —  Histoire  et  Poesie,  p.  194. 

*  Works,  Hartford,  1889,  I.  213  f.  Essay  on  Wordsworth,  etc.  Bruchmann, 
in  his  excellent  Poetik,  Berlin,  1898,  gives  up  the  attempt  to  mark  off  poetry  from 
prose,  speaks  of  a  "  neutral  ground,"  and  then  defines  poetry  as  "  Steigerung 
durch  Form  und  Inhalt;  die  Form  ist  Gesang,  Rhythmns,  Reim"  (p.  53). 
What  more  could  the  defender  of  rhythm  ask  as  working  test? 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        37 

confidence."  This  is  to  be  deplored,  perhaps,  from  Bage- 
hot's  point  of  view ;  but  Adam  Bcde  remains  prose,  and 
Enoch  Ardeji  is  commonly  set  down  as  poetry,  and  there  an 
end.  Why,  too,  should  Boccaccio's  Tales,  or  the  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  be  married  to  immortal  verse .''  Jeremy  Taylor's 
beautiful  bit  of  prose  about  the  lark  is  as  satisfying  in  its 
own  way  as  Shelley's  verses  are ;  they  are  different  ways, 
and  one  wishes  as  little  to  turn  one  into  verse  as  to  turn  the 
other  into  prose.  Dr.  Johnson,  who  recognizes  no  poet  till 
"  he  has  .  .  .  distinguished  all  the  deUcacies  of  phrase  and 
all  the  colours  of  words  and  has  learned  to  adjust  their  dif- 
ferent sounds  to  all  the  varieties  of  metrical  modulation,"  yet 
concedes  that  "  perhaps  of  poetry  as  a  mental  operation 
metre  or  music  is  no  necessary  adjunct,"  brings  out,  with 
his  sturdy  common  sense,  the  clash  of  theory  and  practice. 
As  a  mental  operation,  that  is,  as  the  poetic  impulse  and  as  a 
matter  of  theory,  poetry  is  not  tested  by  rhythm ;  "  it  is,  how- 
ever, by  the  music  of  metre,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "that  poetry 
has  been  discriminated  in  all  languages,"  —  in  other  words, 
metre  will  serve  as  a  practical  test.  Now  this  hedging,  this 
confusion  of  ideas,  this  facing  one  way  in  theory  and  another 
way  in  practice,  is  due  partly  to  a  shame  and  partly  to  a  tra- 
dition. Where  is  the  dignity  of  the  art,  if  any  Bavius  can  pin 
this  facile  badge  of  rhythm  to  his  coat  and  strut  about  a  bard 
in  good  standing }  Ronsard  had  this  scruple  on  his  mind ; 
so  had  Sidne}'-,  so  even  comfortable  Opitz,  so,  in  spite  of  his 
own  definition,  the  elder  Casaubon.  Tradition  of  the  human- 
ists, of  days  when  poetry  held  in  fee  all  science,  all  the  gor- 
geous east  of  wisdom  itself,  rules  to  this  day,  and  keeps  men 
groping  for  a  subtle  and  esoteric  definition.  Hence,  too,  a 
series  of  futiUties  and  contradictions  in  dealing  with  rhythm 
as  a  component  part  of  poetry. 

So  one  comes  to  the  second  argument  for  rhythm  as  the 
test  of  poetry.     Not  only  does  the  test  of  imagination  fail  to 


38  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

work,  but  all  the  defenders  of  prose  poems  fall  into  contradic- 
tion and  confusion  so  soon  as  they  abandon  the  other  test,  so 
soon  as  they  undertake  to  put  their  ideas  into  any  but  a 
protestant  and  academic  form ;  moreover,  this  protest  nearly 
always  rises  from  the  wish  to  count  as  poetry  some  master- 
piece of  prose.  Take  a  few  typical  writers  on  the  theme. 
Baumgarten,  the  founder  of  aesthetics,  wrote  ^  an  essay  in 
which  he  undertook  an  exact  definition  of  poetry,  and  finally 
summed  it  up  as  oratio  sensitiva  pet-fecta,  speech  that  is  both 
concrete,  —  calling  up  in  the  mind  a  distinct  picture,  —  and 
perfect.  A  few  years  later,  in  his  AletJieopJdlits,  he  returns 
to  the  quest,  and  asks  what  a  poem  really  is.  A  poem,  he 
answers,  is  speech  so  charged  with  energy  that  it  demands 
metrical  expression.  Yet  the  more  he  ponders  over  the 
quality  of  rhythm,  which  in  the  actual  definition  seemed  im- 
perative, the  less  he  feels  inclined  to  insist  upon  such  a  test ; 
at  last  comes  the  inevitable  concession  of  theory,  and  a  piece 
of  prose  —  here  it  is  Telanaqiic  —  is  suffered  to  pass  as  a 
poem.  After  all  this  conjuring  and  throwing  about  of  Latin, 
one  looks  for  results  and  finds  instead  confusion.  But  Baum- 
garten was  a  dull  pedant;  set  genius  to  work;  call  up  Friedrich 
Schlegel,  who  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  critic  to  study 
the  "  poem  in  prose  "  as  it  deserved,  and  whose  own  perform- 
ances in  Lucinde  made  more  than  one  of  the  judicious  grieve. 
Poetry,  he  says  in  one  place,^  demands  rhythm  ;  for  only  that 
uniformity  which  lies  in  the  corresponding  succession  of  tones 
can  express  the  uniformity  needed  in  all  true  art ;  yet  again,^ 
wishing  to  put  Tacitus  as  well  as  Plato  among  the  poets,  he 
makes  his  wise  Lothario  say  that  "  any  art  or  science  "  which 
uses  speech  as  its  expression,  works  for  its  own  sake,  and  is 

^  When  only  one-an<l-t\vcnty.      I^Ieditationes  rhilosophicae  de  Nonnullis  ad 
Poema  Pertinenlihus,  1735. 

2  Jugendschriften  F.  Sckl.,  ed.  Minor,  I.  99;  a  study  of  Greek  poetry. 
•  AthoKcinn,  III.  87  f.,  in  Talks  about  Poetry. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY    39 

at  its  best,  must  be  counted  as  poetry.  But  let  this,  too,  pass 
as  eccentricity  of  genius  ;  call  upon  some  one  who  has  both 
genius  and  method,  —  say  Schleiermacher,  who  lectured  on 
aesthetics  in  1819,^  and  undertook  to  reduce  to  system  and 
clarity  this  matter  of  poetry  in  prose.  To  help  matters,  the 
subject  is  halved ;  drama  and  epic  are  "  plastic,"  and  can 
dispense  with  rhythm,  while  lyric  is  "  musical  "  from  the  start. 
How  came  rhythm,  then,  into  drama  and  epic .''  Chorus 
explains  the  drama,  but  epic  rhythm  cannot  rest  on  any  such 
original  union  of  music  and  words  ;  there  must  be  an  "  in- 
ward "  reason.  Why  does  "  free  "  productivity  in  speech  seek 
after  musical  form  ?  So  one  comes  back  to  the  difference 
between  poetry  and  prose,  explained  by  the  nature  of  human 
speech  ;  one  draws  a  long  breath  and  sets  upon  another 
exhilarating  run  round  the  circle.  Two  extremes  of  speech 
are  possible,  —  when  no  syllable  is  accented  at  all,  and  when 
all  syllables  are  accented  alike ;  this,  of  course,  will  not 
differentiate  poetry  from  prose.  But  speech  alternates 
accent  and  no-accent,  arsis  and  thesis ;  done  for  logical 
reasons  this  alternation  makes  prose,  for  musical  reasons, 
verse.  In  languages  like  the  classical,  where  rhythmical 
accent  utterly  neglects  logical  accent,  there  can  be  little 
interference  of  prose  with  poetry ;  while  in  tongues  like  the 
Germanic,  where  verse-accent  and  word-accent  tend  to  agree, 
it  is  easy  for  poetry  to  pass  into  prose.  Doubtless  this  is 
keen  thinking ;  it  explains  in  some  degree  why  imaginative 
prose  is  absent  from  the  classics  as  compared  with  modern 
drama  and  romance.  But  it  will  not  do  for  a  definition,  and 
Schleiermacher  begins  a  subtle  but  ineffectual  analysis  of 
poetry  old  and  new.  In  a  Greek  drama  there  was  mingling 
of  measures,  now  more  and  now  less  musical ;  in  modern 
drama  this  difference  appears  as  a  mingling  of  verse  and 
prose.     But  if  one  thinks  of  the  greater  musical  element  in 

1  Aesthetik,  Berlin,  1842. 


40  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

classical  verse,  then  the  modern  difference  between  poetry 
and  prose  ^  "  is  not  much  greater  than  the  difference  i7i  classical 
poetry  between  epic  and  dramatic  measures .''  Now  what  has 
Schleiermacher  really  done  for  the  matter  in  hand  ?  For 
comparative  literature  he  has  done  a  distinctly  brilliant  piece 
of  work ;  but,  even  apart  from  the  fact  that  no  really  clear 
idea  of  poetry  in  itself  has  been  gained,  the  difference  between 
poetry  and  prose,  and  the  function  of  rhythm,  have  not  been 
elucidated.  It  has  not  been  shown,  after  all,  whether  rhythm 
is  or  is  not  a  necessary  part  of  poetry.  So  one  turns  to  the 
modern  scholar,  to  the  student  of  poetry  as  an  element  in 
human  life,  to  one  who  studies  it  in  the  light  of  psychology ; 
but  here  is  the  same  contradiction.  Guyau,  who  thinks  this 
distinction  of  poetry  and  prose  a  problem  of  high  importance, 
is  in  one  place ^  quite  confident  that  "poets"  like  Michelet, 
like  Flaubert,^  —  he  who  first  of  Frenchmen*  tried  to  give  to 
his  words  an  echo  of  the  sensations  described,  a  vague  onoma- 
topoeia, and  the  wider  hint  of  a  general  situation,  —  and  like 
Renan,  "  have  been  able  to  dispense  with  rhythm."  But 
verse,  he  thinks,  is  permanent;  it  will  be  "the  natural  lan- 
guage of  all  great  and  lasting  emotions  "  ;  while  in  another 
book,^  this  excellent  and  lamented  writer  not  only  assigns  to 
rhythm  an  importance  capitale,  but  calls  it  "  the  very  main- 
stay of  poetic  speech."  And  here  again  is  intolerable 
confusion. 

Into  this  pit  of  contradiction  have  fallen  even  sane  and 
capable   critics  like  A.  W.  Schlegel,  and  sober  philologists 

^  See  p.  663. 

2  Problemes  de  V EsthHique  Contemp07-ai7ie,  p.  172. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  150, —  "  ce  poete  sans  le  rhythme." 

*  Gautier,  too,  thought  that  Flaubert  had  "  invented  a  new  rhythm  "  in  prose, 
and  described  it;  see  the  report  of  \.\\\'i,y  Journal  des  Goncoiirt,  1S62,  January  I. 
But  later,  in  the  same  journal  (1876,  February  24),  Goncourt  refers  all  this  sort  of 
thing  to  Chateaubriand  :  "  sa  belle  prose  poetique,  mere  et  nourrice  de  toutes  Us 
proses  colorees  de  rheure  actuelle.  .  .  ." 

^  U Art  au  Point  de  Vue  Sociologique,  p.  312. 


RHYTHM    AS    THE    ESSENTIAL   FACT    OF    POETRY        41 

like  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt.^  Nobody  could  be  more  dis- 
tinctly an  advocate  of  the  test  of  rhythm  than  the  elder  Schle- 
gel  was  in  certain  Letters,  widely  read  in  their  day,  on  Poetry, 
Metre,  and  Speech  ;2  if  it  be  objected,  he  says,  that  outpour- 
ings of  a  full  heart  ought  not  to  be  hemmed  by  rule,  it  is 
answer  enough  to  say  that  they  always  have  been  under  this 
control,  and  that,  whatever  the  possibilities  of  the  case,  poetry 
is  and  has  been  governed  by  rhythm.  Rhythm  is  born  with 
poetry,  and  "whether  by  Ontario  or  by  the  Ganges,"  where 
poetry  is,  there  too  is  rhythm.  As  for  "the  so-called  poetic 
prose,"  Schlegel  is  very  bitter ;  it  "  springs  from  poetic  impo- 
tence," and  it  "  tries  to  unite  the  prerogatives  of  prose  and 
poetry,  missing  the  perfection  of  both."  Elsewhere,'^  in  an 
amusing  little  dialogue,  he  sets  Grammar  and  Poetry  talking 
after  this  wise  :  "  You  speak  so  simply  !  "  says  Grammar.  "  I 
must,"  answers  Poetry,  "in  order  to  distinguish  myself  from 
Poetic  Prose !  "  And  again,*  he  likens  prose-poetry  to  the 
ostrich,  which  has  a  gait  half  flying,  half  running,  and  wholly 
awkward.  Even  the  dialogue  of  the  drama  needs  rhythm ;  for, 
thinks  Schlegel,  its  style  demands  measured  and  regular  move- 
ment of  verse.  Master  of  translation,  like  Herder  before  him, 
he  is  against  the  translation  of  verse  save  by  verse  itself  ;  and 
the  context  shows  that  he  is  looking  upon  verse  as  an  indis- 
pensable condition  of  poetry. 

When,  however,  in  the  lectures  at  Berlin  Schlegel  begins 
to  define  poetry  and  to  theorize  about  it,  holding  as  he  does 
a  brief  for  the  romantic  school,  for  those  doctrines  of  freedom 
which  could  not  away  with  any  sovereignty  of  measured 
speech  over  the  play  of  fancy  and  would  have  no  set  paths 

1  See  Humboldt,  Werke,  VI.  230  ff. 

2  "  Briefe  iiber  Poesie,  Sylbenmaas  und  Sprache,"  first  in  Schiller's  Horen,  re- 
printed in  the  Charakteristiken  und  Critiken,  I.  318  ff.;  Werke,  ed.  Bocking,  VII. 
98  ff. 

3  Wettstreit  der  Sprachen,  Bocking,  VII.  199. 

*  Etwas  iiber  William  Shakspere,  Bocking,  VII.  55. 


42  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

through  the  "  moon-flooded  night  of  enchantment,"  he  turns 
squarely  upon  the  test  of  rhythm. ^  It  is  a  crude  notion  of 
the  phiHstine,  he  declares,  eiiie  bUrgerlicJie  meymmg,  that  what- 
ever is  in  verses  is  a  poem.  Nor  is  much  mended  by  saying 
only  that  can  be  called  poetry  which  ought  to  be  and  has  to 
be  composed  in  verse ;  of  late  a  kind  of  poetry  has  come  to 
the  fore  which  rejects  verse  entirely,  —  the  romance,  the 
novel.  And  where  is  yesterday's  scorn  for  the  poem  in 
prose  .''  ^ 

This  study  of  contradictions  could  be  carried  into  many 
another  field  ;  but  it  is  time  to  consider  a  third  point,  —  that 
in  actual  argument  defenders  of  the  test  of  rhythm  seem 
really  to  come  off  better  than  their  foes.  These  opponents 
start  in  a  fog,  and  fog  besets  them  all  their  way.  The  main 
authority  to  which  they  appeal  is  Aristotle  ;  but  over  certain 
passages^  in  the  Poetics,  their  point  of  departure,  hangs  a 
haze  of  uncertainty  if  not  of  contradiction.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  Aristotle  really  meant  to  say  what  champions  of 
poetry  in  prose  declare  him  to  have  said ;  moreover,  these 
brave  texts  must  be  taken  along  with  a  brief  but  pregnant 
passage  in  which  he  looks  at  origins  and  beginnings  of 
poetry,  a  passage  which  lends  itself  less  readily  to  the  pur- 
poses of  those  who  would  sweep  rhythm  from  the  field.  In- 
deed, sundry  say  that  this  is  not  Aristotle's  meaning  in  the 
brave  text  itself.  "  Language  without  metre,"  observes 
Whately,*  is  a  bad  translation ;  it  should  be  "  metre  without 

^  See  below,  p.  134,  for  a  still  more  noteworthy  and  yet  quite  unnoticed  change 
of  front  made  by  Schlegel  in  the  article  of  folksong. 

2  It  must  be  said  for  Schlegel  that  he  is  here  —  so,  at  least,  it  seems  —  merely 
clearing  the  way  for  his  historical  and  "genetic  "  study  of  the  art,  and  so  is  bound 
to  have  no  hampering  dogma,  vio  parti pris  in  the  case. 

^  Notal)ly  that  division  of  epopceia,  "  which  imitates  by  words  alone  or  by  verse." 
The  question  is  whether  Aristotle  meant  in  the  first  case  "  words  without  metre  " 
or  "  words  without  music."  SeeTwining's  fourth  note.  — It  has  been  pointed  out 
that  nowhere  in  the  fragment  does  Aristotle  essay  a  formal  definition  of  poetry. 

<  Rhetoric,  III.  iii.  3. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        43 

music."  Twining,!  one  of  the  best  commentators,  refers  to 
that  other  passage,  where  one  is  told  that  "  imitation  being 
natural  to  us,  and  .  ,  .  melody  and  rhythm  being  also  natural, 
.  .  .  those  persons  in  whom,  originally,  these  propensities 
were  the  strongest,  were  naturally  led  to  rude  and  extempo- 
raneous attempts,  which,  gradually  improved,  gave  birth  to 
poetry."  Twining  makes  a  judicious  comment.  "  In  this 
deduction  of  the  art  from  the  mimetic  and  musical  instincts, 
Aristotle  includes  vcj'sc  in  his  idea  of  poetry,  which  he  at  least 
considered  as  imperfect  zvitJioiit  it.  All  that  he  drops,  else- 
where, to  the  disparagement  of  metre,  must  be  understood 
only  comparatively :  it  goes  no  further  than  to  say  that  imita- 
tion, that  is,  fiction  and  invention,  deserves  the  title  of  poetry, 
or  making,  better  than  verse  without  imitation."  Elsewhere, 
too,  as  Twining  shows,  Aristotle  puts  verse  among  the  requi- 
sites of  poetry. 2  A  good  Aristotehan,  J.  C.  Scaliger,  a  greater 
man,  by  the  way,  than  modern  criticism  concedes,  who  first 

^  Aristotle's  Treatise  on  Poetry,  2d  ed.,  I.  289.  This  view  of  Twining  is  up- 
held in  some  highly  sensible  remarks  by  Mr.  A.  O.  Prickard  in  a  lecture,  Aristotle 
and  the  Art  of  Poetry,  London,  189 1.  What  Aristotle  clearly  meant  to  say  is  that 
"  metre  is  not  the  most  essential  characteristic  of  poetry,  yet  it  would  be  a  misuse 
of  language  to  call  anything  a  poem  zukich  is  not  metrical  iji  form."  (Italics  not 
in  original,  p.  60.)  Mr.  Prickard  agrees  with  Whately,  Twining,  and  many 
others,  that  the  words  of  the  passage  in  question,  and  the  instances  given,  do  not 
make  against  this  view;  and  "elsewhere,  Plato  and  Aristotle  invariably  assume 
that  only  what  is  metrical  is  to  be  called  poetry;  nay,  that  metrical  writing  and 
poetry  are,  for  the  common  purpose  of  language,  convertible  terms.  '  In  metre, 
as  a  poet,'  says  Plato,  'or  without  metre  as  a  layman.'  'A  good  sentence,'  says 
Aristotle, '  should  have  rhythm  but  not  metre;  if  it  have  metre,  it  will  be  a  poem.'  " 
See  the  Phcedrus,  258,  D.,  and  Aristotle's  Rhetoric,  III.  8. 

2  A  clear  summary  of  the  case  as  argued  in  Italy  may  be  found  in  Quadrio, 
Delia  Storia  e  delta  Ragione  d^ogni  Poesia,  I.  Bologna,  1739;  II.-VII.  Milan, 
1 741-1752.  See  I.  2  ff.  Quadrio  is  outright  for  the  test  of  verse  and  for  a  gener- 
ous rendering  of  Aristotle.  He  gives  the  names  of  forgotten  pleaders  on  both 
sides,  and  thinks  the  noes  have  it  against  a  traditional  Aristotelian  view;  not  to 
quarrel  forever,  "  Basta,  che  nacque  la  Poesia  col  Verso  e  col  Canto :  ne,  propa- 
gata  fra  le  nazioni,  fu  altrimenti  mai  lavorato  che  in  Verso."  —  Spingarri,  Literary 
Criticism  in  the  Renaissance,  New  York,  1S99,  pp.  9  ff.,  points  out  that  Mantuan 
was  for  the  verse-test,  Savonarola,  Minturno,  Daniello,  against  it. 


44  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

in  his  time  undertook  a  science  of  poetry  and  not  a  mere 
guide  to  the  art,  who  broke  new  ground,  and  who  had  at 
least  the  instincts  of  historical  and  comparative  method,  is 
squarely  for  the  test  of  verse. ^  Poetry  is  imitation  in  verse. 
In  the  opening  sections  of  his  work^  he  calls  the  poet  not  so 
much  a  maker  of  fiction  as  of  verses,^  defends  rhythm  almost 
in  Hamann's  phrase  as  the  mother-tongue  of  man,  derives 
poetry  from  singing,  and,  with  a  touch  of  psychological 
method,  makes  appeal  to  the  child  who  must  go  to  sleep  with 
song.^  In  the  later  sections,^  he  vigorously  attacks  the  idea 
of  poetry  in  prose.  He  is  followed  by  another  pioneer  of  the 
historic  treatment  of  dogma,  G.  J.  Vossius,  who,  tossing  to 
the  winds  any  notion  that  verse  itself  makes  the  poet,  de- 
clares that  verse  is  nevertheless  condition  of  the  poetic  work.^ 
For  poetry  was  meant  to  be  sung  —  the  genetic  consideration 
has  a  strong  and  wholesome  influence  upon  these  men  —  and 
how  can  that  be  sung  which  has  no  rhythm .-'  Or  take  the 
rhythm  from  the  Iliads;  they  turn  to  mere  "fabulous  sto- 
ries." Briefly,  while  metres  without  the  aid  of  diction  and 
genius  can  make  no  poem,  fiction  — Aristotelian  imitation  — 
is  powerless  without  the  help  of  verse.  To  the  same  purpose 
and  earlier,  Isaac  Casaubon ;    the  test  of  poetry  is  rhythm, 

^  "Censet  hoc  ipsum  .  .  .  Caesar  Scaliger,  qui,  quod  raro  facit,  hac  parte  ab 
Aristotele  j-eceJii"  says  Vossius,  de  art.  poet.,  §  7. 

'^  lulii  Caesaris  Scaligeri  .  .  .  Poetices  Libri  Septem  .  .  .  1561,  the  first  edi- 
tion, published  three  years  after  the  author's  death. 

^  See  p.  3'' :  *'  Poetae  igitur  nomen  non  a  fingendo  .  .  .  sed  initio  a  faciendo 
versu  ductum  est.  Simul  enim  cum  ipsa  natura  humana  extitit  vis  haec  numerosa, 
quibus  versus  clauditur." 

*  Ibid.,  "  Infans  ([uocjue  prius  canit  quam  loquitur,  videmus  enim  plerosque 
haud  allLer  somnum  captare." 

'^  See  p.  347a. 

^  Gerardi  Joannis  Vossii  de  artis  poeticae  natura  ac  constitutione  .  .  .  Amstelo- 
dami,  1647.  §  4>  "  Atque  ut  multi  ex  solo  metro  male  colligunt  aliquem  esse 
poetam :  ita  contra  aberrant  alii,  qui  existimant,  ne  quidem  requiri  metrum,  ut 
poeta  aliquis  dicatur.  Haec  tamen  sententia  a  nonnullis  ipsi  tribuitur  Aristoteli 
...  §  5.  At  alii  censent  Aristotelem  numtjuam  agnovisse  ullum  poema 
dfierpov  ,  .  .'" 


RHYTHM    AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        45 

and  any  utterance  which  comes  under  metrical  laws  is  so  far 
a  poem.^  Scaliger,  Vossius,  and  Casaubon  are  "good  "  ;  and 
their  credit  comes  down  to  them  from  their  betters.  Petrarch, 
with  Latin  so  at  his  heart,  could  never  confuse  poetry  and 
prose.  Dante's  definition  ^  is  cold  comfort  for  the  heretic 
about  a  rhythmic  test.  Of  the  smaller  fry,  Ronsard  cer- 
tainly cleaves  to  this  test  of  rhythm  in  poetry.'^  Gascoigne, 
as  the  title  of  his  little  treatise  shows,  assumes  with  his  teacher 
Ronsard  that  verse  is  the  condition  if  not  the  essence  of  the 
art ;  and  Puttenham,  Webbe,  Campion,  Daniel,  Harvey,  even 
Spenser,*  lean  the  same  way.  Sidney,  it  was  shown  above, 
is  no  real  opponent.  Bacon  himself,  quoted  so  often  to  sus- 
tain the  cause  of  poetry  in  prose,  should  be  read  more  care- 
fully ;  ^  he  really  tosses  to  the  winds  all  question  of  form,  and 
turns  to  poetry  as  "one  of  the  principal  portions  of  learning." 
So  the  great  age  thought  of  poetry ;  and  so  the  balance 
inclines   as    one   comes    nearer   to   our    own    days.        Isaac 

1  Isaaci  Casauboni  de  Satyrica  Graecorutn  Poesi  dy  Romanorum  Satira  Libri 
duo,  Parisiis,  MDCV,  pp.  352  f.  "  Certum  heic  discrimen  statuitur  inter  earn 
orationem  quae  poema  dici  potest,  &  quae  non  potest,  discrimen  illud  est  me- 
trum.  .  .  .  Omnem  metro  astrictam  orationem  &f  posse  &=  debere  poema  dici." 
The  rest  is  instructive.  Borinski,  to  be  sure,  Poetik  d.  Renaissance,  p.  66,  says 
that  Casaubon  wished  to  call  Herodotus  a  poet;  but  a  detached  phrase  of  this 
sort  —  compare  Scaliger's  epic  in  prose  —  goes  for  little  when  it  fails  to  force  the 
barrier  and  break  down  the  writer's  definition.  Dryden,  on  the  other  hand, 
making  "  invention "  the  sole  test  of  poetry,  clashes  badly  with  his  opinion 
(^Essay  on  Satire)  that  "  versification  and  numbers  are  the  greatest  pleasures  of 
poetry." 

2  As  Howell  translates  the  not  too  clear  Latin  "  fictio  rhetorica  in  musicaque 
posita,"  poetry  is  "  a  rhetorical  composition  set  to  music."  See  also  an  article 
in  the  Quarterly  Review,  with  reference  to  the  Convivio,  April,  1899,  p.  303. 

^  See  his  works,  ed.  Blanchemain,  VIL  320. 

*  The  whole  dispute  about  rime  shows  this  "  importance  capitale  "  of  verse 
itself. 

^  Advancement  of  Learning,  ed.  Wright,  II.  iii.  4  (pp.  loi  ff.).  Clearer  in  the 
Latin  version,  his  antithesis,  "  nam  et  vera  narratio  carmine,  et  ficta  oratione 
soluta  conscribi  potest,"  is  not  identical  with  the  proposition  that  poetry  is  inde- 
pendent of  rhythm.  He  says  it  "is  in  measure  of  words  for  the  most  part 
restrained." 


46  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Vossius,  in  a  curious  work  ^  published  without  his  name, 
holds  to  his  father's  view  of  the  case.  Shaftesbury ^  is  per- 
emptory for  "  metred  prose,"  but,  as  both  a  lord  and  a  wit, 
disdains  to  give  his  reasons ;  while  another  person  of  quality, 
Sir  William  Temple^  indeed,  regards  metred  prose  as  a 
monstrosity.  Trapp,  in  his  Oxford  lectures,^  is  squarely 
for  the  rhythmic  test,  and  will  hold  it  in  the  teeth  of  all 
Aristotelians ;  so  will  another  professor  of  poetry,  Polycarp 
Leyser,^  of  Helmstadt,  a  rationalist  in  his  day,  who  thinks 
it  high  time  to  have  a  modern  system  of  poetics  not  drawn 
altogether  from  the  ancients. 

Across  the  channel,  meanwhile,  relations  of  poetry  and 
prose  had  been  discussed,  now  as  an  eddy  in  the  maelstrom 
of  argument  about  ancients  or  moderns,  now  as  a  question 
for  itself.  The  Telemaqtie  of  Fenelon  was  defended  as  a 
great  poem  in  prose;  to  the  objection  that  it  was  not  written 
in  verse,  came  answers  in  abundance.  One  of  them,  for 
example,  calls  upon  the  ancients ;  ^  Aristotle,  Dionysius, 
Strabo,  said  that  verse  is  not  essential  to  epic  poetry.  "  One 
may  write  it  in  prose,  as  one  writes  tragedies  without  rime." 
And  the  old  saw  —  **  one  can  make  verses  without  poetry, 
and   be    quite    poetic  without    making  verse "  —  is  followed 

1  De  Poematuin  Cantu  et  Viribus  Rythmi,  Oxon.,  1673.  The  reference  to  ori- 
gins is  interesting :  "  illud  quidem  certum  omnem  poesin  olim  cantatum  fuisse. 
.  ,  .     Unde  sequitur,  quicquid  non  canitur  aut  cantari  nequeat,  non  esse  poema." 

2  Characteristics,  5th  ed.,  Birmingham,  1763,  I.  254,  note,  and  III.  264. 
8  Essays,  "  Of  Poetry." 

*  Praelcctiones  Poeticae,  4th  ed.,  London,  1760;   see  I.  24. 

^  Programma  de  Vera  Indole  Poeseos  Praelectionibus  Praemissum,  Ilelmst., 
1719.  See  also  his  programme  of  1720  introducing  lectures  on  the  Ars  Poetica 
of  Horace. 

8  CEuvres  Completes  de  M.  de  Fenelon,  Tome  V.,  "  Discours  sur  le  poeme 
epique,"  pp.  34  ff.  There  are  many  discourses  on  this  theme  of  prose-poetry  in 
the  Memoires  of  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  and  Belles  Lettres.  The  Abbe 
Fraguier  is  dull  but  weighty  for  the  test;  Burette,  a  real  scholar,  is  sensible  on  the 
same  side  {Mem.  X.  212  f.,  in  1730).  The  younger  Racine  is  very  feeble;  after 
reading  his  contradictory  and  vapid  papers,  one  has  Chaucer  on  one's  lips  —  "No 
more  of  this,  for  goddes  dignite  !  " 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL  FACT   OF   POETRY        47 

by  a  definition  of  the  whole  matter;  what  constitutes  a 
poem  is  "  the  lively  plot,  the  bold  figures,  the  beauty  and 
variety  of  the  images  ;  it  is  the  fire,  the  enthusiasm,  the 
impetuosity,  the  force,  a  je  ne  sais  quoi  in  the  words  and  in 
the  thoughts  which  only  nature  can  give."  So  run  a  dozen 
other  elaborate  pleas  for  prose  in  poetry ;  but  the  arguments 
usually  end  in  contradiction,  and  nothing  is  brought  forward 
that  really  sets  aside  the  feeling  long  ago  expressed  by  Tom 
Dekker^  in  his  sputtering,  pamphleteer  style,  that  "  poetrie, 
like  honestie  and  olde  souldiers,  goes  upon  lame  feete  unlesse 
there  be  musicke  in  her,"  and  that  both  poets  and  musicians 
are  children  of  Phoebus  :  "  the  one  creates  the  ditty  and  gives 
it  the  life  or  number,  the  other  lends  it  voyce  and  makes  it 
speake  musicke." 

Even  those  great  changes  which  the  second  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  brought  about  in  the  making  and  in  the 
judging  of  poetry,  left  this  matter  of  prose  and  verse  in  its 
old  estate.  Whenever  the  critic  has  a  writer  to  set  up,  a 
writer  to  pull  down,  this  test  of  verse  will  be  thrust  aside ; 
and  it  is  no  surprise  to  find  men  who  belong  to  the  same 
literary  creed  —  say  Warton  and  Lowth  —  failing  to  see  eye 
to  eye  in  this  one  article  of  faith.  Joseph  Warton,^  in  his 
guarded  attack  upon  Pope,  is  working  slowly  to  the  inference 
that  it  is  not  genius,  but  a  vast  talent,  shiftiness  of  phrase 
and  smoothness  of  verse,  that  must  explain  Pope's  overwhelm- 
ing success.  Hence  Warton,  in  a  reaction  from  this  poHshed 
and  accurate  rhythm,^  is  sure  that  real  poetry  does  not  depend 

^  A  Knighfs  Conjuring,  Percy  Soc,  1842,  pp.  25,  75. 

2  Essay  on  the  Writings  and  Genius  of  Pope,  anon.,  London,  1756.  The 
book  is  dedicated  to  Young,  and  in  the  dedication  Warton  gives  these  general 
views  of  poetry. 

^  Pope  said,  "There  are  three  distinct  tours  in  poetry;  the  design,  the  lan- 
guage, and  the  versification  .  .  ."  Spence,  Anecd.,  p.  23.  As  to  prose  poems, 
he  could  read  Teiefnackus  with  pleasure,  "though  I  don't  like  that  poetic  kind  of 
prose."  Its  good  sense  was  so  great,  "  nothing  else  could  make  me  forget  my 
prejudices  against  the  style."     Ibid.,  pp.  141  f. 


48  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

on  verse.  The  sublime  and  the  pathetic  "  are  the  two  chief 
nerves  of  genuine  poetry."  Lowth,^  on  the  other  hand, 
though  quite  in  line  with  the  new  critical  movement,  setting 
about  his  great  work,  and  undertaking  to  make  his  audience 
feel  and  know  the  Hebrew  scriptures  to  be  poetry,  puts  metri- 
cal questions  in  the  forefront  of  his  study  and  will  prove  that 
these  poems  are  in  verse.  He  would  fain  shun  this  path, 
thorny  as  it  is  and  full  of  snares ;  but  it  is  a  necessary  part  of 
his  journey,  for  he  is  sure  that  poetry  is  not  to  be  considered 
apart  from  metrical  form,  and  it  ceases  to  be  poetry  when  it 
is  reduced  to  prose.^  Here  Lowth  and  Warton  clash  not 
only  on  the  main  point,  but  on  this  subsidiary  matter  of  trans- 
lation. Warton  said  that  by  no  "  process  of  critical  chym- 
istry,"  such  as  dropping  the  measure  and  transposing  the 
words,  can  one  disguise  the  Iliad,  say,  or  the  Paradise  Lost, 
and  "reduce  them  to  the  tameness  of  prose."  Reduced  to 
prose,  says  Lowth,  poetry  does  cease  to  be  poetry.  It  is 
strange  to  see  how  both  sides  of  the  controversy  in  this  mat- 
ter of  verse  and  prose  appeal  to  translation,  and  it  is  mourn- 
ful to  note  the  unstable  character  of  what  ought  to  be  firm 
and  fundamental  facts.  A.  W.  Schlegel,  one  remembers,  stood 
for  translations  in  verse.  So  Whately,  following  Lowth's  opin- 
ion, appeals  to  translation  for  proof  that  to  break  the  verse  is 
to  shatter  the  poem  ;  ^  Racine,*  on  the  other  hand,  appealed  to 
a  translation  of  Isaiah  to  fortify  exactly  the  opposite  opinion. 

1  Pr  a  dec  Hones,  Pars  Prima,  Praelect.  Tertia :  "  Poesin  Hebraeam  metricam 
esse." 

2  "  Sed  cum  omni  poesi  haec  sit  veluti  propria  quedam  lex  et  necessaria  con- 
ditio constituta,  a  qua  si  discedat,  non  solum  praecipuam  elegantiam  desiderabit 
et  suavitatem,  sed  ne  nomen  suum  obtinebit."  It  should  be  added  that  Calmet, 
de  Poesi  vet.  Hebrae.,  p.  15,  is  against  this  verse  test,  "  Essentiale  Poeseos  quae- 
rimus  in  certo  quodam  sermone  vivido,  animate,  pathetico,  figurisque  hyperbo- 
licis  audacius  ornato.  Nee  solam  versificationem  Poetas  facere,  nee  a  pedum 
mensura  Poesin  dici  persuademur."     Then  Plato. 

»  Rhetoric,  III.  iii.  3. 
*  The  younger,  of  course. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        49 

Or  will  it  be  said  that  Goethe  has  settled  this  question  in 
favour  of  Warton's  view  ?  Every  critic  knows  the  oracle  from 
Weimar  which  declared  the  best  part  of  a  poem  to  be  what- 
ever remains  when  it  is  translated  into  prose ;  every  critic, 
however,  is  not  at  pains  to  quote  the  entire  passage,  with 
its  important  concession  to  verse  and  its  reason  for  the  state- 
ment as  a  whole.  "  I  honour,"  says  Goethe,^  "  rhythm  as 
well  as  rime,  by  which  poetry  really  conies  to  be  poetry  ;'^  but 
the  thorough  and  permanent  effect,  what  develops  one  and 
helps  one  on  one's  way,  is  that  which  is  left  of  the  poet  when 
he  is  translated  into  prose.  Here  is  nothing  but  the  con- 
tents pure  and  simple,  —  otherwise  often  concealed,  or,  if 
absent,  replaced  by  a  fine  exterior  form.  For  this  reason  I 
think  prose  translations  better  than  poetical  in  the  early  stages 
of  educatio7iy  He  goes  on  to  recommend  a  prose  version  of 
Homer,  to  praise  Luther's  Bible  ;  but  it  is  clear  that  the 
whole  extract  is  no  argument  against  the  test  of  rhythm. 
Not  to  insist  on  Goethe's  concession  that  it  is  rhythm  which 
makes  poetry  to  be  poetry,  one  may  note  how  little  prose 
translation  does  for  a  lyric,  which,  after  all,  is  the  poet's 
poem.  What  would  be  left  in  prose,  any  prose,  of  Goethe's 
own  Ueber  alien  Gipfeln  ist  R21I1  ?  The  heart  of  poetry  is 
another  matter,  its  spirit,  its  informing  life ;  ^  the  historian 
meets  it  in  terms  of  its  bodily  appearance,  and  must  have  a 
concrete  test.     There  is  no  valid  test  for  the  historian  save 

1  Dichtung  iind  Wahrheit,  Book  XI.;    Hempel  ed.,  III.  45. 

^  "  Wodurch  Poesie  erst  zur  Poesie  wird,"  —  the  erst  will  bear  a  stronger  trans- 
lation. Schiller,  too,  said  that  one  must  put  into  verse  whatever  rises  above  the 
commonplace;  and  Goethe  agreed  with  him:  all  poetry  " should  be  treated 
rhythmically."  Victor  Hugo,  in  his  Preface  to  Crom-tuell,  pp.  2>i  f-j  defends 
verse  for  the  drama;  prose  has  not  adequate  resources. 

3  Milton  is  thinking,  too,  of  this  in  his  well-known  passage  in  the  treatise  on 
Education.  "  I  mean  not  here  the  prosody  of  a  verse  .  .  ."  boys  learn  that  in 
their  grammars;  but  in  time  they  must  be  taught  the  great  things, —  "that  sub- 
lime Art  which  in  Aristotle's  Poetics  .  .  .  teaches  what  the  laws  are  of  a  true  Epic 
poem,  what  of  a  Dramatic,  what  of  a  Lyric,  what  Decorum  is,  which  is  the  grand 
masterpiece  to  observe." 

E 


50  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

this  test  of  rhythm.  Particularly  as  sociological  and  historical 
responsibility  begins  to  weigh  upon  the  critic,  he  finds  that 
such  a  test  is  demanded  by  his  work.  Adam  Smith  ^  — 
Blair 2  is  almost  with  him,  but  sHps  in  a  plea  for  Ossian  —  is 
distinctly  on  the  side  of  verse.  So  is  Monboddo,^  a  pioneer  in 
anthropology,  keen,  observant,  who  did  his  thinking  for  him- 
self, and  condemned  "  all  that  has  been  written  of  late  in  the 
rhapsody  style,  or  measured  prose,"  declaring  that  "  poetry 
is  nothing  more  than  measured  rhythm."  Sensible  things, 
too,  were  said  on  this  matter  by  men  who  have  left  no  traces 
in  criticism  ;  one  of  these  sayings  seems  to  be  a  pretty  conclu- 
sion and  summary  of  the  whole  debate.  Dr.  Thomas  Barnes, 
a  Unitarian  clergyman  now  forgotten,  but  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  Literary  and  Philosophical  Society  of  Manchester,  an 
interesting  group  of  men,  read,  in  December,  1781,  a  paper* 
"  On  the  Nature  and  Essential  Character  of  Poetry  as  Distin- 
guished from  Prose."  He  turns  to  origins,  and  refers  to  "the 
common  remark  that  the  original  language  of  mankind  was 
poetical";  he  turns  to  ethnological  hints,  and,  following  Dr. 
John  Brown,  speaks  of  "  Indian  orators  at  this  day  "  ;  then, 
summing  up  the  case,  he  charges  for  rhythm.  "  To  finished 
and  perfect  poetry,  or  rather  to  the  highest  order  of  poetic 
compositions,  are  necessary,  elevation  of  sentiment,  fire  of 
imagination,  and  regularity  of  metre.  This  is  the  summit  of 
Parnassus.  But  from  this  sublimest  point  there  are  gradual 
declinations  till  you  come  to  the  reign  of  prose.  TJie  last  line 
of  separation  is  that  of  regular  metre T  Dr.  Thomas  Barnes 
is  forgotten  ;  but  his  statement  of  the  case  is  memorable  above 
a  host  of  admired  and  often  quoted  deliverances  on  poetic  art. 
As  one   steps  into  the  modern  world,  one  finds  the  con- 

^  Essay  on  the  Imitative  Arts. 

2  No.  XXXV.  of  the  Lectures. 

3  Of  the  Origin  and  Progress  of  Language,  II.  50;    IV.  4I. 

*  See  the  Transactions  of  the  Society,  Vol.  I.  Warrington,  1785,  pp.  54  ff. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY    51 

troversy  in  its  old  estate,  getting  no  help  from  new  methods 
and  ridiculous  enough,  by  this  expense  of  motion  without 
progress,  in  contrast  with  the  gain  made  by  sciences  of 
every  other  sort.  Does  Coleridge,^  master  of  rhythm,  reject 
rhythm  as  a  test,  Poe  ^  comes  forward  to  declare  it  an 
essential  condition,  and  to  announce  "the  certainty  that 
music,  in  its  various  modes  of  metre,  rhythm,  and  rime,  is  of 
so  vast  a  moment  in  poetry  as  never  to  be  wisely  rejected." 
Carlyle  himself,  reckoned  by  sundry  critics  as  a  poet  in  prose, 
names  the  "vulgar"  definition  of  verse  only  to  approve  it. 
Germans,  he  says,^  have  spoken  of  "  infinitude  "  as  differ- 
encing true  poetry  from  true  speech  not  poetical;  "  if  well 
meditated,  some  meaning  will  gradually  be  found  in  it.  For 
my  own  part,  I  find  considerable  meaning  in  the  old  vulgar 
distinction  of  poetry  being  metrical,  having  music  in  it,  being 
a  song."  And  he  really  adopts  the  test, — of  course,  with 
characteristic  riders.  "Observe,"  he  says,  "how  all  pas- 
sionate language  does  of  itself  become  musical  ...  all 
deep  things  are  song.  .  .  .  Poetry,  therefore,  we  will  call 
musical  thought.''  So,  again,  the  vague  and  passionate  pro- 
tests of  Stuart  Mill  beat  in  vain  against  such  a  temperate 
statement  as  Whately  made  in  his  Rhetoric.^  "  Any  compo- 
sition in  verse  (and  none  that  is  not)  is  always  called, 
whether  good  or  bad,  a  Poem,  by  all  who  have  no  favourite 
hypothesis  to  maintain.  .  .  .  The  title  of  Poetry  does  not 
necessarily  imply  the  requisite  beauties  of  Poetry."  Such 
a  test,  cried  Mill,^  is  vulgarest  of  all  definitions,  and  "  one 
with  which   no  person  possessed  of  the  faculties  to  which 

1  Biographia  Liieraria,  Chap.  XIV.  —  "  Poetry  of  the  highest  kind  may  exist 
without  metre,  and  even  without  the  contradistinguishing  objects  of  a  poem." 

■^  The  Poetic  Principle. 

^  On  Heroes,  "The  Hero  as  Poet." 

*  III.  iii.  3;   another  part  of  the  passage  is  quoted  above,  p.  42. 

5  Dissertations  attd  Discussions,  I.  89  ff.,  "Thoughts  on  Poetry  and  its  Varie- 
ties."    The  article  first  appeared  in  1833. 


52  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

poetry  addresses  itself  can  ever  have  been  satisfied."  This 
"  wretched  mockery  of  a  definition  "  is  more  than  inadequate  ; 
for  poetry  may  exist  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse,  may  even 
do  without  words,  and  can  speak  through  musical  sounds, 
through  sculpture,  painting,  and  architecture.  It  is  strange 
to  hear  Mill  making  a  serious  formula  out  of  phrases  to 
which  one  is  indulgent  enough  when  they  come  in  half 
playful  guise.^  Apart  from  the  uselessness  of  such  a  formula, 
—  fancy  the  historian  of  poetry  opening  a  new  chapter  with 
"  We  will  now  consider  the  Parthenon  !  " — it  has  no  theoreti- 
cal value,  as  is  easy  to  see  when  Mill  begins  to  run  his 
division  lines.  Two  definitions  of  poetry  please  him,  one,  by 
Ebenezer  Elliott,  that  it  is  "impassioned  truth,"  the  other, 
by  a  writer  in  Blackivood,  that  it  is  "  man's  thought  tinged 
by  his  feelings."  But  these  "  fail  to  distinguish  poetry  from 
eloquence,"  and  Mill  goes  on  to  say  that  eloquence  is  "  some- 
thing heard,"  while  poetry  is  "  something  overheard."  Some- 
thing overheard .-'  I  mean,  he  explains,  that  "  all  poetry  is 
in  the  nature  of  a  soliloquy,"  is  "the  natural  fruit  of  solitude 
and  meditation."  Now  this  is  sheer  nonsense,  although 
more  than  one  critic  has  hailed  it  as  an  oracle ;  of  that 
which  comes  down  to  us  as  poetry,  a  good  part  is  anything 
but  sohloquy  or  the  fruit  of  solitude.  "  Read  Homer,"  cried 
out  Herder,  perhaps  at  the  other  extreme,  but  certainly  with 
better  reason  than  Mill,  "  as  if  he  were  singing  in  the 
streets  !  "  It  will  be  shown  how  vast  a  proportion  of  poetry, 
too,  that  belongs  to  the  higher  class,  was  made  and  sung 
in  throngs  of    men.       Poetry  is  a  social  fact.       Mill's  own 

1  It  would  be  more  to  the  purpose  if  one  went  to  the  sources  of  poetry  and 
religion  and  studied  the  survivals  of  primitive  rite.  At  seed-time  in  Brandenburg, 
the  women  still  go  out  to  the  fields  and  unbind  their  hair  in  sign  that  the  flax 
may  grow  as  long  as  their  tresses.  With  such  a  ritual  act  goes  nearly  always  a 
song,  a  repeated  shout,  a  cry  to  the  powers  of  growth;  and  this,  if  one  please,  is 
poetry  in  its  making,  while  it  is  easy  to  think  that  the  symbol  would  sooner  or 
later  force  itself  into  the  words  —  "  make  our  flax  like  this  hair." 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   53 

words  defeat  him.  "  Whosoever  writes  out  truly  any  human 
feeling,  writes  poetry";  and  "what  is  poetry  but  the 
thoughts  and  words  in  ivJiicJi  emotion  spontaneously  embodies 
itself?''  A  few  pages  before,  it  was  "the  fruit  of  solitude 
and  meditation,"  a  test  that  would  make  poetry  of  Kant's 
categorical  imperative,  refusing  the  title  to  Luther's  out- 
burst at  the  diet,  although  this  at  once  becomes  poetry 
if  one  accepts  the  later  definition  in  terms  of  emotional 
spontaneity.  And  that  wrath  at  the  "  vulgarity  "  of  a 
rhythmic  test  is  nothing  more  than  the  old  mistake ; 
because,  forsooth,  colours  and  lines  fail  to  account  in  them- 
selves for  the  grandeur  of  painting,  one  jumps  to  the 
assertion  that  paintings  need  not  have  colours  and  Unes. 
Let  us  cling  to  vulgarity,  if  leaving  it  means  to  assert  that 
the  Parthenon  is  a  poem,  and,  by  implication,  that  a  sigh 
is  a  statue. 

One  of  the  most  consistent  expositions  of  poetry  is  that 
given  by  Hegel.^  Here  is  a  careful  abstract  of  propositions 
as  carefully  formulated  and  proved.  He  has  ruled  out  the 
"  poetic  sentence."  Specimens  of  the  sublime,  like  that  Let 
there  be  light,  and  tJiere  zvas  light  which  Longinus  ^  admired, 
are  not  poetry.  History,  too,  is  excluded,  Herodotus,  Tacitus, 
and  the  rest,'^  as  well  as  eloquence,  and  not  as  Shelley  rejects 
Cicero,  on  personal  grounds,  but  because  of  the  law  in  the 
case.  Yet  this  summary  is  still  inadequate  as  a  practical  test, 
and  with  it  the  historian  is  in  a  plight  no  better  than  when 
with  Sidney  or  Coleridge  he  was  including  whatever  piece  of 
writing  seemed  certainly  though  indefinitely  poetic.  In  the 
latter  case  he  steered  by  a  compass  which  was  at  the  mercy 
of   unnumbered    hidden    magnets ;    in  the  former  case  the 


1  Aesthetik,  Werke,  ed.  1838,  X. III.;  summary, pp. 269  f.  —  "So  ist  denn  jedes 
wahrhaft  poetisches  Kunstwerk  ein  in  sich  unendlicher  Organismus,"  etc. 

2  IX.  9.     See  the  translation  by  Roberts,  p.  65. 

3  Hegel,  work  quoted,  p.  257. 


54  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

signs  on  the  card  are  blurred.^  But  Hegel  does  not  leave 
the  matter  here ;  purposely  or  not,  he  gives  a  clear  test  for 
the  historian  when,  twenty  pages  later,  he  comes  to  speak  of 
versification.  Professors  Gayley  and  Scott  ^  point  out  that 
the  present  writer  has  made  too  much  of  this  concession ; 
instead  of  saying  that  verse  is  "  the  only  condition  absolutely 
demanded  by  poetry,"  one  should  say  that  Hegel  makes 
verse  indispensable.  But  this  is  quite  enough  for  the  pur- 
pose. The  passage  in  question  runs  thus  :  "  To  be  sure, 
prose  put  into  verse  is  not  poetry,  but  simply  verse,  just  as 
mere  poetic  expression  in  what  is  otherwise  prosaic  treat- 
ment results  only  in  a  poetic  prose ;  but  nevertheless,  metre 
or  rime,  being  the  one  and  only  sensnons  aroma,^  is  absolutely 
demanded  for  poetry,  and  indeed  is  even  more  necessary  than 
store  of  i^nagery,  the  so-called  beaiitifiil  diction.''  And  now 
for  Hegel's  reason,  which  quite  agrees  with  the  historian's 
demand  for  an  available  test.  He  goes  on  to  say  that  the 
fact  of  verse  in  any  piece  of  literature  shows  at  once,  as 
poetry  indeed  demands  there  should  be  shown,  that  one  is  in 
another  realm  from  the  realm  of  prose,  of  daily  life ;  this 
constraint,  if  one  likes  to  call  it  constraint,  forces  the  poet 
outside  the  bounds  of  common  speech  into  a  province  wholly 
submitted  to  the  laws  of  art.  That  poetry  has  to  be  some- 
thing more  than  this,  that  there  are  other  canons,  nobody 
denies ;  but  the  first  step  for  a  poet  is  into  this  realm  of 
verse  where  he  must  prove  in  sterner  tests  and  by  other 
achievements  whether  he  is  citizen  or  trespasser. 

1  E.  S.  Dallas,  Poetics,  p.  8,  is  sound  in  idea,  but  less  happy  in  illustration, 
when  he  says  that  a  poem  without  verse  can  be  no  more  than  the  movement  of  a 
watch  without  its  dial-plate. 

2  Literary  Criticism,  p.  134. 

2  "  Als  der  erste  und  einzige  sinnliche  Duft."  The  passages  to  which  Gayley 
and  Scott  refer  —  e.g.  Hegel,  p.  227  —  do  not  change  this  statement  in  the  pres- 
ent application.  Nobody  pretends  that  rhythm  is  the  soul  of  poetry;  it  is  a 
necessary  form,  a  necessary  condition. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        55 

Hegel,  it  might  be  said,  is  in  the  clouds ;  he  is  out  of 
touch  with  science,  and  with  that  logic  of  facts  which  rules 
investigations  of  the  present  day.  But  the  same  way  of 
thinking  holds  with  a  practical  Englishman  like  Mr.  Edmund 
Gurney,^  whose  feet  are  planted  very  firmly  on  solid  ground, 
who  is  distinctly  hostile  to  the  poem  in  prose,  that  "  pestilent 
heresy,"  as  Professor  Saintsbury  has  called  it,  and  whose 
idea  of  art,  which  always  includes  an  appeal  to  the  sense  of 
form,  demands  in  poetry  a  definite  metre  or  rhythm.  And 
the  same  way  of  thinking  holds  with  a  student  of  modern 
psychology,  M.  Souriau,^  who  undertakes  to  define  poetry  in 
terms  of  science.  Poetry  itself  derives  from  music  and 
prose,  —  presumably  he  means  by  prose  the  speech  of  daily 
life,  and  not  what  Walter  Pater  means  in  his  essay  on  Style 
when  he  makes  "  music  and  prose  literature  .  .  .  the  oppo- 
site terms  of  art "  ;  poetry  might  therefore  be  called  musical 
speech.^  To  show  how  much  depends  on  the  music,  M.  Sou- 
riau  turns  to  translations  from  foreign  poetry  into  prose  ver- 
nacular. "  The  more  poetical  this  original  text,  the  more  it 
loses  in  the  change.  .  .  .  This  depreciation  is  due  to  the 
change  of  process,  and  not  to  the  change  of  tongue,  for  the 
translation  of  a  piece  of  prose  would  not  show  these  faults." 
On  the  other  hand,  now,  take  an  irreproachable  piece  of 
verse,  with  this  superiority  just  shown  to  be  due  to  its 
rhythm,  and  look  at  it  with  regard  to  logical  w'orth.  How 
unsatisfying,  how  "thin,"  is  the  thought  in  it!  Change 
again  the  point  of  view,  and  study  poetry  for  its  music ; 
one  will  be  no  better  pleased  than  when  one  hunted  for  its 

^  The  Power  of  Sound,  London,  1880.  Chap.  IIL  is  on  the  elements  of  a 
work  of  art.     On  p.  51,  again  on  p.  423  f.,  Mr.  Gurney  rejects  poetry  in  prose. 

^  Theorie  de  P Invention,  these  pour  le  doctorat  es  Lettres,  Paris,  1881, 
p.  142. 

^  It  is  perhaps  superfluous  to  point  out  that  imagination  is  utterly  ignored  in 
this  analysis,  and  to  recall  Mr.  Swinburne's  phrase  that  "  the  two  primary  and 
essential  qualities  of  poetry  are  imagination  and  harmony." 


56  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

thought.  The  rhythm  would  be  intolerably  monotonous  in  a 
piece  of  music.  The  sonorous  words,  taken  as  sound,  are 
not  really  pleasing  to  the  ear.  Rime,  if  one  will  look  at  it 
this  way,  is  a  precede  enfantin.  In  sum,  poetry  is  logically 
inferior  to  prose,  and  musically  inferior  to  pure  melody,  — 
and  what,  then,  is  its  own  charm }  It  pleases  us,  not  by 
either  one  of  these  elements,  but  by  their  combination ;  it  is 
harmony,  but  in  a  peculiar  sense.  "  It  is  not  the  harmony  of 
thought,  logical  system,  and  order,  not  the  harmony  of  sounds 
or  musical  system,  but  the  harmony  between  sounds  and 
thoughts.  07te  loves  to  feel  the  idea  bending  and  adjusting 
itself  to  the  ndes  of  verse,  and  the  verse  yielding  to  the  de- 
mands of  the  idea."  ^ 

It  is  time  to  close  the  poll.  For  poetry  in  prose  no  one 
has  spoken  in  such  a  temperate  and  yet  forcible  fashion  as 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,^  though  his  arguments  are  by  no 
means  new.  Nothing  but  "poetry,"  he  asserts,  can  serve  as 
the  word  to  express  what  one  finds  in  Malory's  Death  of 
Arthur,  in  chapters  of  Job  and  Isaiah.  But  arguments  such 
as  he  makes  with  energy  and  eloquence  lose  their  force  when 
confronted  with  the  cool  reasoning  of  Mr.  Bosanquet,  ^  who 
shows  clearly  that  poetry,  whatever  else  it  may  be,  must  be 
rhythmic  utterance.  Even  in  the  clash  of  opinion  between 
these  modern  writers,  one  finds  what  is  to  be  found  through- 
out the  entire  controversy,  down  from  the  days  of  the  early 
renaissance,  that  the  advocates  of  a  rhythmic  test  for  poetry 
have  the  better  of  the  argument.  It  has  been  shown  that 
there  is  no  other  test  for  the  historian  of  poetry  as  a  social 
institution ;  and  whenever  another  test  has  been  set  up, 
its  own  advocates  have  not  only  abandoned  it  in  practice, 

1  A  curious  passage  which  follows  (pp.  149  f.),  treats  poetry  as  a  supply  of 
coal,  rapidly  used  and  close  to  exhaustion,  so  far  as  originality  and  freshness  are 
concerned. 

2  Choice  of  Books,  pp.  81  f.,  126. 
8  History  of  Esthetics,  pp.  46 1  f. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   57 

but  even  in  theory  have  obscured  it  with  a  mass  of  con- 
tradictions.^ 

There  remains,  of  course,  the  anibtdando  argument ;  the 
champion  of  poetry  in  prose  points  to  the  work  which  passes 
under  this  name.  A  book  could  be  written  on  the  long  series 
of  concessions  in  matter  of  territory  which  verse  has  made  to 
prose ;  but  no  sensible  critic  will  allow  these  transfers  to 
prove  that  poetry  has  ceased  to  be  rhythmic  utterance.  The 
most  obvious  transfer,  of  course,  is  translation ;  is  not  the 
English  Bible  as  noble  poetry,  one  asks,  as  can  be  found  in 
any  time  or  clime .''  Mr.  Theodore  Watts  -  is  sure  of  the 
rhythmic  test  until  he  faces  the  claims  of  this  noblest  prose. 
Yet  surely  what  appeals  to  us  here  is  not  poetry,  but  the 
genius  of  the  English  tongue  at  its  greatest  and  best,^  fling- 
ing its  full  strength  upon  a  task  which  at  the  time  lay  close 
to  the  heart  of  the  English  people.  The  Bible  is  not  the 
masterpiece  of  our  poetry,  but  of  our  prose  ;  it  beats  not 
only  with  the  divine  pulse  of  its  original,  but  also  with  that 
immense  vitality  and  energy  of  English  religious  life  in  days 
when  to  many  Englishmen  life  and  religion  were  identical. 
That  does  not  make  it  poetry.  One  must  not  open  the 
gates  of  poetry  to  this  or  that  passage  of  prose,  and  shut 
them,  through  whim  or  shame,  upon  a  thousand  other  pas- 

1  Professor  Masson  in  the  North  British  Review,  1853,  reviewed  the  Poetics  of 
Dallas,  printing  the  review  later  as  fifth  essay  in  IVordswortk,  Shelley,  and  A'eats, 
London,  1874;  the  sixth  essay  "On  Prose  and  Verse,"  repeats  a  discussion  of  De 
Quincey's  prose  in  the  journal  just  named  for  1854.  Poets  are  led,  Masson  says, 
by  the  "  flag  "  of  imagery  and  the  "  flute  "  of  verse;  and  while  he  incUnes  to  the 
test  of  rhythm,  he  comes  to  no  conclusion.  Bain  {On  Teaching  English,  1887; 
see  Chap.  VIL  and  pp.  249  ff.)  also  inclines  to  the  test,  but  hedges  after  the 
manner  of  his  brethren. 

-  Encycl.  Brit.,  article  "  Poetry,"  which  defines  its  subject  as  "  the  concrete 
and  artistic  expression  of  the  human  mind  in  emotional  and  rh>thmical  language. 
...  In  discussing  poetry,  questions  of  versification  touch  .  .  .  the  very  root 
of  the  subject." 

^  In  the  sense,  of  course,  that  it  absorbed  the  best  labour  of  two  cen- 
turies. 


58  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

sages. ^  Let  in  that  great  chapter  of  Job,  and  anon  Wertlier 
is  there,  Silas  Marner,  Tom  Jones,  —  we  have  marshalled  this 
rout  already.  No,  if  the  Bible  be  poetry,  it  is  because  it  is 
rhythmic  utterance,  not  because  it  is  sublime.  That  tremen- 
dous reach  of  emotion  borne  on  the  cadence  of  a  style  majestic 
and  clear,  the  voice  of  a  soHtary  desolation  crying  to  the 
desolation  of  all  mankind,  the  wail  of  an  eternal  and  un- 
answered question  — 

Wherefore  is  light  given  to  him  that  is  in  misery, 
And  life  unto  the  bitter  in  soul  ? 

—  is  not  this  a  poem  ?  It  is  almost  certainly  a  poem  in  the 
original ;  it  might  be  a  poem  in  English,  provided  the  rhythm 
of  the  lines,  printed  as  they  now  are,  with  parallelism  a.nd 
cadence  properly  brought  out,  seemed  to  the  reader  to  have 
a  recurrent  regularity  which  could  take  it  into  the  sphere 
of  rhythmic  law ;  otherwise  it  is  prose,  the  prose  of  great 
literature,  indeed,  but  prose.  It  must  be  granted,  too, 
that  the  latter  view  is  preferable.  As  great  literature,  the 
book  of  Job  belongs  with  Dante,  and  Milton,  and  with  a  few 
passages,  where  Goethe  touches  the  higher  levels,  in  Faust ; 
but  it  is  not  poetry  in  the  sense  that  Dante  and  Milton  and 
Goethe  impress  upon  one  when  one  reads  their  great  passages. 
Longinus  writes  on  the  sublime  in  literature,  and  he  is  within 
his  rights  when  he  puts  Thucydides  and  Homer  and  Moses 
upon  one  plane  ;  but  it  is  the  plane  of  sublimity  in  thought 
and  phrase,  and  it  is  not  the  plane  of  poetry.  Poetry  has  no 
monopoly  of  the  emotions  ;  a  line  that  stirs  the  heart  is  poetry 
when  it  belongs  in  a  rhythmic  whole,  and  is  prose  when  it 
does  not.  Tendcntcsque  manns  ripae  ultcrioris  aviore  is 
Vergil's  verse  ;  "  the  future  balances  and  the  hieroglyphic 
meanings    of    human    suffering "    is    De    Quincey's    prose. 

^  The  same  argument,  of  course,  applies  to  Plato,  as  in  the  "  hymns  "  to  Eros, 
noble  prose  indeed;  and  in  less  degree  to  such  passages  as  De  Quincey  on  the 
Ladies  of  Sorrow. 


RHYTHM    AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        59 

Carlyle  says  of  his  murdered  Princess  de  Lamballe,  "  She 
was  beautiful ;  she  was  good  ;  she  had  known  no  happiness," 
—  anvil-strokes  as  strong  as  the  strongest  in  English  speech. 
Webster,  over  his  murdered  Duchess  of  Malfi,  makes  the 
brother  cry  out,  "  Cover  her  face ;  mine  eyes  dazzle ;  she 
died  young."  What  have  phrases  like  "  poetic  prose"  to  do 
with  great  literature  of  this  sort,  and  how  will  one  distinguish 
between  these  two  isolated  passages,  both  throbbing  with  an 
intensity  of  expression  which  breaks  out  in  the  three  short 
clauses .''  Well,  the  rhythm  of  one  comes  to  its  rights  in  the 
full  poetic  period  where  Webster,  rough  as  his  verses  are, 
infused  a  noble  harmony ;  while  the  cadence  of  the  other 
falls  naturally  into  the  sweep  of  Carlyle's  prose.  Dryden, 
indeed,  w^th  his  wonted  critical  felicity,  gives  the  key  of  the 
whole  matter.  "  Thoughts,"  he  says  in  his  preface  to  the 
Fables,  "thoughts  come  crowding  in  so  fast  upon  me,  that  my 
only  difficulty  is  to  choose  or  to  reject,  to  run  them  into  verse, 
or  to  give  them  the  other  harmony  of  prosed 

Since  Turgot  ^  told  France  and  the  world  that  a  new  kind 
of  poetry  had  come  in  the  guise  of  Gessner's  prose  idylls 
the  poem  in  prose  has  made  many  claims  for  Parnassian  rec- 
ognition. At  Bertrand  we  have  glanced  already ;  his  scholar 
Baudelaire  ^  made  as  bold  essay  ;  and  so,  in  quite  recent  times, 
the  Swede  Ola  Hansson;^  all  these  are  Werther  with  a  dif- 
ference, and  in  the  last  case  with  a  dash  of  Nietzsche.  He, 
too,  wrote  a  dithyrambic  prose  for  his  hysterical  but  notewor- 
thy Zarathustra ;  yet  who  does  not  feel  the  passage,  as  into 
another  realm  of  art,  when  one  suddenly  comes  upon  that 
powerful  lyric  in  verse,*  O  Menseh,  gieb  AcJit  ?  Nietzsche, 
to  be  sure,  had  something  to  say  ;  but  with  the  little  men  these 

1  CEuvres,  Paris,  1810,  IX.  227  ff.,  "  De  la  Prose  Mesuree."    See  also  pp.  185  ff. 

2  See  his  Petits  Po'emes  en  Prose,  in  CEuvres  Completes,  Paris,  1869,  IV.  p.  2, — 
an  interesting  preface. 

3  Young  Ofeg's  Ditties,  tran^.  Egerton,  London.  1895. 

*  Also  Sprach  Zaruthustra,  IIL  *"  Das  Andere  Tanzlied." 


6o  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

dithyrambic  phrases  threaten  to  turn  into  mere  raving,  and 
often  carry  out  the  threat.  What  saves  a  poet  from  this  danger, 
and  the  great  poets  know  it,  is  the  dignity,  the  self-restraint, 
and  the  communal  human  sympathy  of  rhythm,  which  binds 
one,  as  in  that  old  consent  of  voice  and  step,  to  one's  fellows,  and 
checks  all  individual  centrifugal  follies  ;  there  are  no  bounds, 
no  laws,  there  is  no  decorum,  in  such  whirling  words,  until 
they  whirl  in  ordered  motion  and  until  cosmos  is  where  chaos 
was.  "  Slaves  by  their  own  compulsion,"  these  sensual  and 
dark  things  rebel  in  vain  against  the  laws  of  poetic  form  ;  pas- 
tels and  whatever  else,  they  have  not  even  the  dignity  of 
truly  great  prose.  They  are  out  of  their  sphere  ;  to  adapt  a 
line  from  the  Dimciad,  prose  on  stilts  is  several  degrees  worse 
than  poetry  fallen  lame. 

Poetry,  then,  is  still  rhythmic  utterance,  though  it  has  lost 
great  stretches  of  territory  to  prose.  Prose,  to  be  sure,  makes 
a  tempting  proposition  to  her  impoverished  friend.  "Let  us 
call  ourselves  by  one  name,"  she  says,  "  unite  all  our  power, 
and  so  make  front  against  science."  Such  a  union  has  long 
appealed  to  the  French.  Fenelon,  one  knows,  sought  thus 
to  revive  the  epic ;  and  many  pens  were  set  scratching  for  or 
against  the  Telimacomanie.  Chateaubriand  ^  tried  a  cadenced 
prose  in  his  Martyrs,  by  way  of  putting  new  life  into  sacred 
poetry.  Flaubert^  and  sundry  of  his  school,  above  all,  the 
Italian  D'Annunzio,  annex  poetry  to  the  prose  romance,  and 
not  poetry  as  an  informing  spirit  simply,  but  the  cadences, 
the  colour,  the  very  refrain.^      Maeterlinck    uses  the  poetic 

^  I  lis  defence  is  very  fine  and  languid  and  aristocratic,  —  "inutile  dispute  de 
mois"  he  protests  at  last:  OEuvres  Completes,  Paris,  1852,  V.  84,  295  ("  Examen 
des  Martyrs"). 

2  A  foreigner  is  no  judge  in  these  things;  but  he  may  say  how  much  more  the 
lucidity  of  Merimee,  of  M.  Anatole  France,  appeals  to  him  than  the  poetic  prose 
of  Plaubert's  Salammbd. 

2  Has  any  one  noted  in  the  opening  chapter  of  the  Trionfo  della  Morte  a 
prose  refrain,  "  Gocce  di  pioggia,  rare,  cadevano,"  repeated  with  considerable 
effect  ? 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        6 1 

device  of  repetition  —  say  in  the  Princesse  Malcine  —  to  the 
verge  of  regular  rhythm.  Rime  itself  is  not  excluded  ;  wit- 
ness this  from  D'Annunzio's  novel :  ^  "rideva,  gemeva,  pre- 
gava,  cantava,  accarezzava,  singhiozzava,  miniaciava ;  ilare, 
flebile,  umile,  ironica,  lusinghevole,  disperata,  crudele."^  Is 
poetry,  then,  fallen  by  the  wayside,  and  has  prose  spoiled  her 
of  her  raiment,  so  as  to  stand  hereafter  in  her  stead  ?  No. 
Whatever  Walter  Pater  may  have  done  for  English  or  these 
man  for  Itahan  and  French,  they  have  at  best  set  up  a  new 
euphemism  ^  of  no  real  promise  and  permanence.  When  the 
final  balance  is  struck,  these  writers  will  perhaps  take  a  place 
in  prose  analogous,  even  if  in  a  contrary  spirit,  to  the  place 
of  Swift  in  verse.  Swift's  "unpoetic  verse  "  is  remorselessly 
clear,  remorselessly  direct ;  one  must  read  his  poetry,  and  in 
great  measure  admire,  even  like  it,  for  its  compelling  energy 
and  lucidity  of  style.  Yet,  after  all,  one  feels  that  these  are 
ahen  virtues,  imported  from  the  realm  of  prose;  and  one 
reads  Swift's  poems  much  as  one  listens  to  a  foreigner  con- 
versing correctly,  admirably,  in  one's  own  tongue.  And  as 
with  Swift's  prose  excellence  in  poetry,  so  with  this  poetic 
excellence  in  prose ;  in  the  long  account,  laiidatur  et  alget. 
It  makes  the  vain  attempt  to  move  landmarks  set  up,  not  by 
men,  but  by  man,  by  human  nature  itself. 

So  much  for  the  theories ;  but  it  must  now  be  proved  be- 

1  Ibid.,  p.  396.     The  structure  is  strophic  and  very  artistic  in  its  complication. 

2  See  D'Annunzio's  dedication  of  this  romance,  and  his  artistic  creed,  quite  an 
echo  of  the  preface  to  Baudelaire's  poems  in  prose. 

^  There  is  often  in  these  prose-poems,  so  much  praised  now,  a  startling  re- 
minder of  the  golden  style  of  certain  despised  folk  who  wrote  cadenced  and  col- 
oured prose  in  their  romances  three  centuries  ago.  And  not  only  in  romances; 
Tom  Nash  tried  rimed  prose,  both  with  alliteration  and  with  actual  rime,  by  way 
of  helping  the  antithetical  clause.  See  the  "  Anatomy  of  Absurdity,"  in  Nash's 
Works,  ed.  Grosart,  I.  6  ff.,  24:  inferre :  averre;  praise:  dales;  nose:  rose;  and 
the  lilt  of  "  to  play  with  her  dogge,  than  to  pray  to  her  God."  The  Arcadia  is 
not  so  much  a  rimed  or  rhythmical  prose,  as  swelling  and  sonorous.  For  medix- 
val  rimed  prose,  see  Wackernagel,  Gesch.  d.  deutsch.  Lit.,  2d  ed.,  I.  107  ff.,  and 
Sievers,  Altger.  Meirik,  p.  49,  —  the  latter  for  Germanic  relations. 


62  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

yond  question  that  rhythm  is  the  vital  and  essential  quality 
in  the  beginnings  of  poetic  art.  Where  to  draw  the  line  be- 
tween prose  and  verse,  between  the  recurrence  which  is  regu- 
lar and  which  is  called  for  our  purposes  rhythm,  and  the 
recurrence  that  is  not  regular,  is  hard  indeed  ;  but  perhaps  a 
satisfactory  rule  may  be  given  in  the  words  of  Professor  Budde, 
a  distinguished  student  of  that  Hebrew  poetry  to  which  so 
many  advocates  of  the  prose  poem  have  made  appeal.  "The 
fundamental  law  of  form  in  all  poetry,"  he  says,^  "  by  which  in 
every  race  and  at  all  times  verse  is  distinguished  from  prose, 
is  that  while  in  prose  the  unchecked  current  of  speech  flows 
consistently  as  far  as  the  thought  carries  it,  the  range  of 
thought  and  the  length  of  the  sentence  changing  often  and 
in  many  ways,  verse,  on  the  other  hand,  divides  its  store  of 
thought  into  relatively  short  lines  which  appeal  to  the  ear 
as  distinct  not  only  by  this  shortness,  but  also  by  relations 
determined  by  laws  definite,  indeed,  but  varying  with  differ- 
ent races  and  languages.  Whenever  the  formal  factors  of 
poetry  are  enriched,  these  smallest  units,  the  verses  or  lines, 
tend  to  join,  by  a  new  bond,  in  a  higher  unit  of  form."^  This 
formal  factor  may  be  now  alliteration,  now  rime ;  with  the 
Hebrews,  says  Budde,  it  was  the  thought,  which  made  a 
higher  unit  of  the  short  and  separated  units  of  line  or  verse. 
Lowth's  parallelismiis  nietnbronmi  does  not  quite  cover 
the  rhythmical  structure  of  Hebrew  verse ;  no  matter  if  a 
fixed  metre  has  not  yet  been  found,  the  rhythm  is  evident, 
and  its  law  is  essentially  equal  length  of  the  verses  within 
the  group.^     For  a  test,  one  must  fall  back  upon  that  original 

^  "Das  Volkslierl  Israels  im  Munde  der  Propheten,"  in  the  Preussische  Jahr- 
bucher,  LXXIII.  (1893),  460  ff.     See  p.  465. 

2  Driver,  Introd.  Lit.  Old  Test.,  p.  361,  says  that  rhythm,  the  restrained  flow 
of  expression,  separates  poetry  from  prose. 

^  Professor  Sievers  has  announced  "  a  discovery  of  the  principles  of  Hebrew 
metre,"  and  his  exposition  will  be  welcome.  See  Sitzungsberichte  der  s'dchsischen 
Akademie  der  Wissenschaften,  5  February,  1899. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        6$ 

organ  of  poetry,  the  human  voice.  Slave  to  the  eye,  one 
often  reads  as  prose  what  one  could  read,  or  what  could  be 
read  to  one,  as  poetry.^  In  any  case,  there  will  be  debatable 
ground,  perhaps  neutral  ground ;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  from 
theory,  from  the  practical  trial,  from  arguments  of  the  learned, 
that  so  far  the  effort  to  obliterate  verse  or  rhythm  as  the  real 
boundary  line  of  poetic  territory,  has  proved  a  failure,  and  is 
likely  to  prove  a  failure  as  often  as  it  shall  be  tried.  The  case 
must  be  taken  to  the  court  of  human  history  and  human  prog- 
ress ;  brought  hither,  all  the  arguments  for  poems  in  prose 
lose  their  power.  If,  as  Biicher  says,  one  is  unwilling  nowadays 
to  let  rhythmic  speech  pass,  merely  in  so  far  as  it  is  rhythmic 
speech,  for  poetry,  that  is  because  ages  of  culture,  with  in- 
creasing aesthetic  demands,  have  quite  naturally  added  new 
conditions ;  but  the  beginning  of  poetry  as  an  aesthetic  fact 
was  in  the  sense  of  rhythm.  The  poem  now  laboriously 
wrought  at  the  desk  goes  back  to  the  rhythm  of  work  or 
play  or  dance  in  the  life  of  primitive  man,  and  the  element 
of  rhythm  is  the  one  tie  that  binds  beginning  and  end ;  if 
poetry  denies  rhythm,  it  denies  itself. 

This  statement  itself,  however,  certain  of  the  learned  now 
vehemently  oppose,  and  bring  reasons  for  their  attitude  quite 
different  from  such  arguments  as  we  have  been  consider- 
ing for  the  prose  poem.  Rhythm  itself,  they  maintain,  is 
the  outcome  of  prose.  It  is  the  child,  says  one  bold 
German,  of  grammatical  inflections  and  the  stress  of  oratory. 
Here  is  fine  revolution,  indeed,  if  they  have  the  trick  to  show 


^  Professional  "  readers "  nearly  always  kill  a  poem  by  reading  it  as  prose. 
Tennyson  read  his  own  verses  almost  in  a  chant.  De  Vigny, /ourna/  d'un  Poete, 
p.  70,  says,  "tout  homme  qui  dit  bien  ses  vers  les  chante,  en  quelque  sorte." 
Ronsard,  CEuvres,  ed.  Blanchemain,  III.  12  f.,  asks  the  reader  of  his  Franciade 
one  thing :  "  Pie  good  enough  to  pronounce  my  verses  well,  and  suit  your  voice 
to  their  emotion,  not  reading  it,  after  the  way  of  certain  folk,  as  a  letter,  .  .  . 
but  as  a  poem,  with  good  emphasis."  So  Quintilian;  but  the  elocutionist  has 
no  bowels  of  mercy. 


64  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

it.  Strabo,  in  a  classic  sentence,^  laid  down  the  law  which 
writer  after  writer  has  taken  without  question  as  undis- 
puted and  indisputable  authority ;  poetry  came  before  prose. 
"Flowery  prose,"  he  said,  "is  nothing  but  an  imitation  of 
poetry,"  which  is  the  "  origin  of  all  rhetorical  language," 
and  was  at  first  always  sung ;  "  the  very  term  prose,''  he  con- 
cludes, "  which  is  applied  to  language  not  clothed  in  metre, 
seems  to  indicate  ...  its  descent  from  an  elevation,  or 
chariot,  to  the  ground."  Hence  the  scrmo  pcdcstris  of  Latin 
writers.  Against  this,  now,  come  sundry  scattered  hints  and 
at  least  two  elaborate  arguments.  Vigfusson  and  Powell,^ 
after  a  consideration  of  old  Scandinavian  poetry,  are  fain  to 
think  that  Germanic  rhythm  was  at  the  start  simply  "  excited 
and  emphatic  prose,"  and  make  rhythm  in  general  not  an 
essential  so  much  as  an  accomplishment  and  aftergrowth  of 
poetry.  Finding  no  metre  in  this  same  Norse  poetry,  none 
in  Hebrew,  Gottsched,^  while  he  allowed  that  songs  were  the 
earliest  poetic  form,  thought  them  to  have  been  simple 
unmetrical  chants,  as  if  a  child  should  sing  the  Lord's 
prayer.  Many  ballads,  even  English  and  Scottish,  seem  to 
show  with  other  supposed  primitive  traits  a  rough  and  faulty 
structure  of  verse,  so  that  certain  critics,  in  their  haste,  make 
the  lack  of  smooth  metres  a  test  of  age,  —  an  idea  which 
long  prevailed  in  regard  to  Chaucer's  versification.  It  is 
said  *  that  until  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  Hun- 
garian poetry  was  "  quite  without  system,  without  rhythm, 
full  of  bad  rimes,  and  mainly  made  up  of  verses  joined  in 
long,  monotonous  rows  "  ;  this,  however,  as  in  India,  may  have 
been  the  case  not  with  lyric,  but  only  with  epic.  Comparetti 
thinks  that  the  Kalcvala  was  founded  upon  earlier  poetic  or 

1  Geography,  Introd.,  I.  ii.  7,  translation  of  Hamilton. 

2  Corpus  Focticuvi  Boreale,  I.  434. 
^  Critischc  Diclitkunst,  pp.  70  f. 

''  I'luchniaiin,  Poctik,  pp.  161,  124,  22. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY       65 

roughly  rhythmic  prose,  — again  a  matter  of  epic  ;  and  earliest 
Japanese  poetry,  so  far  as  it  has  been  preserved,  "is  not  far 
removed  from  prose."  ^  Now  and  then,  but  not  often,  one  is 
told  that  savage  songs  have  no  regular  rhythm  and  no  settled 
order  in  the  verse.  If  it  be  true  that  mere  counting  of  sylla- 
bles was  the  earliest  form  of  common  Aryan  versification,  it 
is  at  first  sight  not  so  unreasonable  to  assume  some  sort  of 
excited  prose  as  a  common  basis  for  this  system  as  well  as  for 
the  systems  of  quantitative  and  of  accentual  rhythm.  More- 
over, as  will  be  shown  in  later  pages,  there  is  a  feeling  abroad 
which  runs  counter  to  any  notion  of  spontaneity,  and  insists 
upon  a  process  of  invention  and  imitation  ;  this,  too,  would 
make  against  a  natural  rhythm,^  would  throw  out  rhythm  as 
an  essential  and  primitive  part  of  poetry.^  So  much  for  scat- 
tered hints  and  observations  ;  there  are  more  elaborate  attacks. 
In  a  treatise  by  Norden  ■*  on  ancient  artistic  prose,  one  has 
under  one's  hand  all  the  evidence  which  can  be  gathered 
from  the  classics,  particularly  the  Greek,  for  this  view  of  the 
relations  between  prose  and  verse ;  here,  too,  are  ranged 
certain  arguments  against  that  old  notion  of  the  precedence 
of  poetry.^     Musical  sense,  rhythm,  was  given  to  man  with 

^  AstOTi,  Japatiese  Literature,  p.  13. 

2  The  younger  Racine  is  startling  with  his  assertion  that  "  poetry  is  the  daughter 
of  nature,  while  verse  is  the  work  of  art."  Mem.  Acad.  Inscr.,  XV.  307  ff., 
"  De  la  poesie  Artificielle.   .   .  ." 

^  Curiously  enough,  J.  Grimm,  though  not  too  clear  in  his  statement,  is  with 
the  rationalists,  in  spite  of  his  "  divine  origin  "  for  poetry  and  the  "  mystery  "  of 
self-made  song,  which  he  advocates  elsewhere;  for  in  his  Ursprung  der  Sprache 
(reprint,  7th  ed.,  1879,  p.  54)  he  says  poetry  and  music  had  their  origin  in  the 
reason,  emotion,  and  imagination  of  a  poet,  and  gives  a  genetic  process  not  unlike 
that  set  forth  by  Mr.  Spencer :  "  denn  aus  betonter,  gemessener  recitation  der 
Worte  entsprangen  gesang  und  lied,  aus  dem  lied  die  andere  dichtkunst,  aus  dem 
gesang  durch  gesteigerte  abstraction  alle  iibrige  musik." 

*  Die  antike  Ktinstprosa,  2  vols.,  Leipzig,  1898.  Mr.  Spencer's  theory,  analo- 
gous in  some  respects  to  Norden's,  is  considered  below. 

5  This  notion  itself — see  the  extract  above  from  Strabo  —  Norden,  I.  35,  refers 
to  a  desire  to  glorify  the  golden  age,  and  to  set  its  poetry  over  against  the  prose 
of  degenerate  modern  days. 


66  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  spoken  word  itself,  as  in  historical  times  to  the  Hellenic 
folk,  whose  melodious  sentence  is  as  inaudible  as  the  music 
of  the  spheres  to  an  ear  dependent  upon  modern  speech. 
Now  before  poetry  was  developed,  Norden  assumes,  there 
was  a  rhythmic  prose  distinguished  by  some  kind  of 
emphasis  from  the  speech  of  daily  life ;  thence  sprang  on 
one  hand  the  rhythm  of  regular  poetry,  and  on  the  other 
hand  a  rhythm  of  impassioned,  oratorical  prose.  The  oratory 
of  Greece  was  a  kind  of  chanting,  and  the  gestures  that  went 
with  it  were  a  species  of  dance ;  but  these  in  no  way  could 
be  called  identical  with  the  singing  or  recitation  of  poetry. 
Then  came  confusion.  Gorgias  began  a  new  era  when  he 
imported  certain  elements  of  poetry  into  his  prose ;  even  the 
rimed  prose  of  the  Middle  Ages  Norden  ^  calls  "  the  result  of 
a  thousand  years  of  development  from  the  time  of  Gorgias." 
The  early  results,  however,  were  destructive.  Tragedy, 
thinks  our  author,  was  ruined  in  Hellas  because  all  barriers 
were  broken  down  between  poetry  and  prose,  and  rhetoric 
overwhelmed  the  drama  ;  great  epos  yielded  to  great  history ; 
gnomic  poetry  vanished ;  epigram  supplanted  elegy ;  dithy- 
ramb made  room  for  lofty  prose  at  large.^  But  this  is 
nothing  more  than  a  process  in  civilized  Greece  analogous  to 
the  process  in  our  own  day  described  a  few  pages  above. 
Even  the  tradition  of  the  classical  writers  pointed  back  to  an 
age  of  poetry  which  preceded  prose ;  for  while  Strabo,  in 
the  passage  already  considered,  and  Varro,^  speak  of  actual 
literature  which  they  had  in  hand,  Plutarch,  writing  on  the 
Pythian  oracle,  made  poetry  the  product  of  primitive  times 
and  prose  the  outcome  of  prehistorical  decadence.  Against 
this  tradition,  which  he  makes  a  mere  glorification  of  the 
1 II.  762. 

2  //'?V/.,  I.  78. 

8  Tarn  apud  Graecos  quam  apud  Latinos  longe  antiquiorem  curam  fuisse 
carminum  quam  prosae,  etc.  Varro  in  Isiodor.  Orig.,  I.  38,  2,  quoted  and  dis- 
cussed by  Norden,  I.  32  f. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        e'] 

golden  age,  Norden  argues  with  learning  and  acuteness,  and 
from  material  furnished  by  Greek  literature  itself.  But 
Greek  Uterature  is  surely  no  criterion  for  primitive  song ; 
persistent  as  this  prejudice  is,^  Norden  sees  that  ethnology 
has  better  points  of  view,  and  in  one  or  two  places  he  calls 
upon  it  for  aid.^  The  distinction  between  poetry  and  prose 
is,  for  him,  "  secondary,  not  essential,"  for  the  reason  that 
he  cannot  find  this  distinction  in  the  earliest  expression  of 
formal  or  solemn  language  known  to  the  various  races  of 
man,  whether  on  highest  or  lowest  planes  of  culture.  His 
summary  may  be  quoted,  temperate  and  reasonable  as  it 
is ;  it  appeals  to  ethnological  arguments,  which  would  be 
close  upon  convincement  if  they  did  not  utterly  neglect,  as 
nearly  all  writers  on  poetry  have  neglected,  the  communal 
basis  of  the  art,  and  the  fundamental  consideration  that 
earliest  poetry  is  more  a  social  than  an  individual  expression. 
Norden's  eye  is  fixed  upon  the  priest,  the  poet,  the  medicine 
man,  the  lawgiver ;  he  forgets  the  throng,  and  he  forgets  that 
the  throng  was  mainly  active  and  rarely  passive  in  the  primi- 
tive stages  of  poetry.  But  let  his  own  summary  be  heard.^ 
The  line  now  drawn  between  poetry  and  prose,  he  maintains, 
was  unknown  to  primitive  races.  Forms  of  magic,  the  lan- 
guage of  the  laws,  ceremonial  religious  rites,  were  every- 
where made  in  prose ;  not,  however,  in  the  prose  of  daily 
conversation,  but  in  a  prose  removed  from  common  condi- 
tions by  two  factors  :  first,  it  was  spoken  in  measured,  solemn 
tones,  and  so  became  rhythmical,  —  not  the  regular  rhythm 

1  "  I  suppose,  of  course,"  said  a  writer  of  considerable  reputation,  to  whom  the 
project  of  the  present  work  was  mentioned,  "  you  will  begin  with  Homer." 

•  Indeed,  the  very  arguments  from  Greek  oratory  hardly  seem  convincing. 
Let  any  one  read  the  section  of  Aristotle's  Rhetoric  (III.  viii.),  where  he  speaks 
of  prose  rhythm.  WTiat  is  this  rhythm  without  metre  but  the  quality,  far  more 
musically  developed  in  Greek,  which  one  also  recognizes  in  the  harmony  of  any 
modern  artistic  prose? 

■^  Work  quoted,  I.  30  f.     See  also  I.  37,  note;   I.  156  ff.;   II.  813  f. 


68  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

of  song,  but  a  sort  of  chant  or  recitation,^  so  that  one  may 
figure  the  early  priest  hke  his  modern  brother,  the  snowy- 
banded,  delicate-handed  one,  at  his  intoning ;  and,  secondly, 
it  was  furnished,  for  emphasis  and  for  the  help  of  memory, 
with  certain  vocal  expedients,  such  as  alliteration  and  rime, 
which  are  inborn  alike  in  the  most  civilized  and  in  the  wildest 
races.  This  kind  of  prose  existed  before  there  was  any 
artistic  poetry.  Norden  would  like  to  see  more  work  done 
in  the  field  of  early  legal  and  religious  forms ;  old  Latin 
prayers,  old  Germanic  laws,  for  example,  have  been  coaxed 
or  bullied  into  some  metrical  scheme,  and  made  to  pass  as 
poetry.  Elsewhere  he  takes  the  case  of  that  prayer  to 
Mars  which  Westphal  and  Allen  called  Saturnian  verse ;  by 
Norden's  reckoning,  this  is  mainly  alliterative,  rhythmic 
prose;  only  the  second  half  can  be  called  metrical;  and  he 
is  convinced  that  Saturnian  verse  itself  is  nothing  but  the 
later  metrical  equipment  of  what  was  once  rhythmic  prose 
solemnly  spoken  with  two  sections  to  the  line.  Carmen,  he 
goes  on  to  say,  is  originally  any  solemn  formula  whether 
spoken  or  sung,  whether  rhythmic  prose,  even  simple  prose, 
or  verse;  2  that  is  "settled."  It  is  a  clever  suggestion,  too, 
that  rhythmic  prose  belongs  with  what  one  now  calls  the 
loose  sentence,  while  artistic  prose,  contemporary  with 
artistic  and  metrical  poetry,  came  into  prominence  with  the 

1  See,  however,  E.  Schroder,  "  Ueber  das  Spell,"  Zst.  f.  deutsches  Alterlhum, 
XXXVII.  241  ff.  Spell  and  lied,  he  says,  are  related  in  terms  of  epic  and  lyric 
charms  or  incantations,  and  form  the  basis  of  the  common  antithesis  of  "  say  " 
and  "sing"  (p.  258).  The  epic  part  of  a  charm,  he  thinks,  was  recited,  while 
the  lyric  part  was  sung.  Unfortunately,  Schroder  comes  to  no  very  definite 
results;  and,  like  most  writers  on  early  verse,  he  neglects  the  communal  and 
choral  conditions  of  primitive  poetry. 

2  Diintzer,  Zeitschr.  deutsch.  Gymnasiahvesen,  1857,  pp.  i  ff.,  the  unwearied 
commentator,  who  has  had  so  much  experience  in  the  practical  reduction  of  poetry 
to  prose,  decided  for  this  view,  and  doubtless  with  some  show  of  right.  A  carmen, 
he  said,  was  anything,  —  oath,  formula,  law,  incantation,  —  spoken  in  loud  and 
solemn  tones.  So  Livy,  I.  26,  on  that  lex  horrendi  carminis.  This  may  be  true 
for  the  medicine  man,  but  it  is  not  true  for  the  throng. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        69 

periodic  structure  ;  ^  so  the  tale,  like  Grimm's  familiar  "  There 
was  once  a  king's  son,  and  he  was  very  beautiful  .  .  .  ,"  in 
its  uninvolved,  consecutive  phrases,  would  give  one  an  idea 
of  the  early  rhythmic  prose. 

All  this  is  useful  and  suggestive ;  but  it  by  no  means  does 
away  with  the  fact  of  regular  rhythmic  utterance  for  primi- 
tive times.  Who,  for  example,  is  going  to  believe  that  rime 
and  alliteration  were  developed  before  regular  rhythm,  — 
regular  rhythm,  as  will  presently  be  shown,  standing  out 
as  the  one  fact  about  savage  poetry  to  which  nearly  all 
evidence  of  ethnology  gives  assent .''  Who  will  deny  that 
quite  as  early  as  any  priest  recited  his  prayer  or  buzzed 
his  magic  in  solemn  prose,  there  was  a  throng  of  folk 
dancing  and  singing  with  a  rhythm  as  exact  as  may  be  ? 
Did  the  priests,  even,  recite  in  "  irregular  rhythmic  prose  " 
that  repeated  e7ios  Lases  juvate  of  the  Arval  rites,  sung 
as  they  beat  the  ground  in  concerted  measure  of  the 
dance.''  "So  long,"  says  Usener^  in  his  book  on  old  Greek 
verse,  "  so  long  as  human  societies  turned  in  solemn  and 
festal  manner  to  the  divinities,  so  long  they  made  petition, 
thanks,  laud,  in  measured  and  rhythmic  verse,  and  the  words 
were  inseparable  from  singing  and  the  steps  of  the  march." 
For  purposes  of  this  kind,  and  such  purposes  are  the  very 
soul  of  primitive  social  life,  chanted  prose  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. An  excellent  authority  in  musical  matters,  Dr.  Jacobs- 
thai,^  points  out  that  the  rhythm,  if  one  may  so  call  it,  of 
the  chant  stands  to  real  rhythm  as  prose  stands  to  verse,  and 
that  the  song  to  which  a  throng  must  dance,  as  in  primitive 
times,  can  "  in    no    case "    lack   the    regular  rJiythm.     Who, 

1  The  X^^ts  fipofx^vr)  and  the  Xe^n  KaTaarpafi/M^vT];  down  to  Herodotus  the 
Greeks,  it  is  said,  spoke  and  wrote  in  the  former  style :  Norden,  I.  37,  note.  He 
appeals  to  specimens  gathered  from  folklore. 

^  Altgriechischer  Versbau,  p.  55. 

^  "  Musikalische  Bildung  der  Meistersanger,"  in  Haupt's  Zeiisch.  f.  deutsches 
Alterthum,  XX.  80  f. 


70  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

moreover,  that  has  read  Biicher's  essay  can  overlook  the 
fact  that  primitive  labour  must  have  begotten  an  exact 
rhythm,  and  very  early  must  have  given  meaning  to  this 
rhythm  by  more  or  less  connected  words  ?  The  proof,  offered 
not  only  by  Norden  but  in  those  scattered  hints  already 
noted,  breaks  down  when  confronted  with  hard  facts.  Ballad 
metres  are  often  rough  in  the  copies  which  have  come  down 
to  us,  but  a  hundred  considerations  show  this  to  have  been 
the  fault  of  the  copy  itself,  not  of  the  makers  and  singers,^ 
and  to  have  been  due  to  the  transfer  from  oral  to  written 
conditions.  There  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  a  letter  should 
not  be  quoted  which  the  late  Professor  Child  wrote  in  1885 
to  the  author  of  the  present  book;  "  any  volkslied,"  he  said, 
"  shows  as  good  an  ear  as  any  Pindaric  ode  by  Gray  or 
whomever  else."  It  is  the  sense  of  compHcated  metres 
which  is  due  to  culture  and  intellectual  development,  and 
not  the  sense  of  exact  and  simple  rhythm.  As  regards  that 
protoplasmic  prose  of  the  popular  tale,  which  Norden  calls 
"the  essential  test  of  primitive  speech,"  how  can  he  prove 
that  it  is  the  essential  test  of  primitive  song  .-*  How  different 
Bruchmann,  who  admits  early  prose  narrative,  but  says  dis- 
tinctly that  early  poetry,  lyric  outpouring  of  emotion,  was 
song;  "the  earliest  of  all  poetry  "  for  him  is  communal  song, 
gesang  in  gcmeinschaft,  golden  words  indeed !  Grosse  is  to 
the  same  effect.  Who  denies  the  tale,  the  loose  prose  style 
in  short  sentences  verging  on  rhythmic  effects  .-'  Of  cour.se 
the  entertainer  told  his  tale  betimes ;  but  earlier  than  this 
tale,  the  dance  of  the  throng,  as  well  as  the  labour  of  daily 
life,  had  from  the  very  beginning  mated  sounds  and  words 
with  rhythm,  precise  rhythm,  as  a  festal  and  consenting  act. 
A  mass  of  evidence,  soon  to  be  considered,   is  overwhelm- 

^  The  reason  why  a  folksong  often  fails  to  have  a  musical  effect,  says  Bockel 
in  the  introduction  to  his  collection  of  Hessian  ballads,  p.  civ.,  is  because  it  is 
taken  down  from  a  single  singer,  whereas  all  these  songs  are  essentially  choral, 
and  need  the  voices  of  a  throng.  This  hint  is  valuable  in  many  directions;  for 
example,  see  below  on  social  singing  at  labour. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   71 

ingly  for  this  state  of  things.  Norden  appeals  for  the  form 
of  the  tale  to  Radloff,  a  great  authority ;  let  us  do  the  same 
for  the  form  of  the  song.  In  an  article  on  poetic  forms 
among  the  Altaic  Tartars,^  Radloff  remarks  that  in  these 
isolated  tribes  popular  literature,  without  even  the  faintest 
influence  from  the  lettered  world,  has  been  developed  in  a 
quite  natural  way.  Especially  worthy  of  note,  he  says,  is 
the  strictness  of  metrical  form  in  their  poetry.  He  notes, 
moreover,  the  inseparable  character,  under  such  conditions, 
of  poetry  and  song.  The  specimens  which  he  gives  are 
anything  but  rhythmic  prose,  and  the  rhythmic  law  is  any- 
thing but  loose.  The  tales  on  the  other  hand  are  quite 
different;  "these  are  not  sung,"  he  says,  "but  recited," 
although  now  and  then  the  reciter  sings  a  verse  or  so. 
Which  came  first,  the  entertainer  and  his  audience,  or  the 
festal,  singing  throng  ?  Evidence  of  ethnology  and  conclusions 
of  sociology  certainly  put  the  singing,  dancing  throng  as  a 
primary  social  fact,  and  the  relation  of  audience  to  entertainer 
as  a  secondary  social  fact.  Mr.  Joseph  Jacobs^  has  hailed 
the  cante-fable  as  protoplasm  alike  of  the  metrical  ballad 
and  of  the  prose  tale,  one  omitting  prose,  the  other  omitting 
verse ;  and  while  this  does  not  really  help  Norden's  claim, 
it  is  worth  the  while  to  note  how  it  assumes  a  development 
which  is  counter  to  all  the  facts.  Even  on  its  chosen  ground 
of  Celtic  tales,  this  theory  meets  indications  that  the  verse 
is  original   and  the   prose  of    later  date.^     The   cante-fable 

^  Zeitschrift  f.  Volkerpsychol.  u.  Sprachwissensck.  IV.  85  ff.  Comparetti  is 
also  unfortunate  in  his  use  of  this  essay  to  prove  that  poetic  prose  came  before 
verse.     See  his  Kalewala,  p.  37, 

2  English  Fairy  Tales,  1898,  p.  247.  Ferdinand  Wolf,  a  man  not  given  to 
hazy  and  romantic  views,  dismisses  the  cante-fable  as  "jedesfalls  .  .  .  eine  En- 
tartung,"  a  degenerate  state  of  the  communal  ballad.  Proben  port.  u.  catal. 
Volksromanze7t,  Wien,  1856,  p.  20,  note  2. 

2  Alfred  Nutt,  Voyage  of  Bran,  I.  135,  citing  Kuno  Meyer,  and  saving  that 
certain  prose  is  "  younger  in  appearance,"  need  not  assume  it  to  have  "  suffered 
from  change,"  but  may  take  a  simpler  view.     The  verse  may  well  be  of  older  date. 


72  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

seems  like  a  late  form,  a  device  of  the  entertainer;  the 
scraps  of  verse  are  survivals,  just  as  the  chorus  in  a  Greek 
drama  is  the  survival  of  a  drama  in  which  all  took  part,  v^ith 
no  division  into  actors  and  spectators.  In  the  Chinese 
drama  ^  an  Occidental  ear  is  offended  by  a  remarkable  con- 
fusion of  speaking  and  singing ;  even  a  single  sentence  in 
the  dialogue  is  so  divided  that  part  is  spoken  and  part  is 
sung.  This  is  no  primitive  and  protoplasmic  state ;  it  is 
rather  the  confusion  of  contraries,  than  the  germ  of  related 
and  naturally  developed  forms  of  art.  Poetry  and  prose  in 
historic  times  have  been  approaching  each  other,  not  diverg- 
ing, and  the  curve  of  evolution  would  indicate  a  wide  dis- 
tinction at  the  start.  Mixture  of  prose,  as  Professor  Sievers 
sees  it,  is  a  sign  of  decay  in  the  MnspiUi,  in  the  Hildebrand 
Lay.^  On  the  other  hand,  in  vigorous  poetry  like  the  Rou- 
manian ballad  there  is  no  mixture  of  prose,  while  the 
Roumanian  popular  tale  is  sprinkled  with  verses ;  yet  here 
is  precisely  where  the  protoplasmic  state  ought  to  be  found 
for  both  arts,  since  the  poetical  style  is  "  simple  as  pos- 
sible," has  often  no  relative  clauses  for  whole  pages,  and 
is  full  of  repetition.^  Under  simple  conditions,  poetry 
often  breaks  up  into  prose,  but  prose  is  not  found  in 
its  transition  to  poetry ;  for  proof  it  is  enough  to  quote  a 
recent  writer  on  German  ballads.*  "  More  and  more,"  he 
says,  "  the  ballads  disintegrate  into  prose,  a  process  which 

'  This  account  is  taken  from  Bruclimann's  Poctik,  p.  217,  and  Letourneau, 
L'AvoluHon  Litter  aire,  pp.  198  f.,  who  gives  other  details.  J.  F.  Campbell, 
Popular  Tales,  etc.,  2d  ed.,  IV.  84,  mentions  cases  of  dual  performance  in  the 
Ilighlan.ls,  where  a  bard  sang  to  his  harp  heroic  passages,  and  a  narrator  "filled 
up  the  pauses  by  telling  prose  history." 

2  Altgcrmajiische  Metrik,  pp.  165,  168. 

^  Rudow,  I'erslehre  unci  Stil  der  ruiiiSniscliefi  Volkslicder,  Halle,  1886, 
pp.  5,  28  f.,  31. 

*  Bockel,  Deutsche  Volksliedcr  aus  Oherhessen  .  .  .  mit  kulliirhistorisch-cthnc- 
graphischer  Einleitung  (the  latter  a  valuable  collection  of  material),  Marburg, 
1885,  pp.  clxxxiii.  f. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL    FACT   OF    POETRY        Jl 

has  been  noted  for  Spain,  Sweden,  Scotland,  Portugal,  and 
is  also  known  in  Germany."  ^  He  gives  quotations  and 
references  to  support  his  assertion,  going  on  to  name  several 
well-known  ballads  which  began  as  such  and  then,  in  the 
guise  of  prose  tales,  won  as  wide  and  as  great  a  vogue  as 
the  originals  had  enjoyed  before.  Perhaps  in  the  case  of 
poetic  composition  at  a  time  when  intellect  has  mastered 
emotion,  prose  may  be  the  basis  of  poetry,  but  this  case  has 
no  bearing  on  primitive  conditions.  Whether  a  poet  nowa- 
days conceives  his  work  in  prose,  as  Goethe  did  in  the 
Iphigenie,  or  begins  with  the  "brains  beat  into  rhythm,"  is 
an  individual  matter.  "  When  Gautier  wished  to  do  a  good 
piece  of  work,  he  always  began  in  verse,"  say  the  Goncourts.^ 
Tradition  makes  Vergil  write  out  his  ^neid  in  prose  and 
then  turn  it  into  verse;  Vida^  commends  this  method  for  the 
prentice  in  poetry.  There  is  a  curious  passage  in  Goethe's 
letter  to  Schiller  of  5  March,  1798,  about  renewed  work  on 
Faust.  "  Some  tragic  scenes  were  done  in  prose  ;  by  reason 
of  their  naturalness  and  strength  they  are  quite  intolerable 
in  relation  to  the  other  scenes.  I  am,  therefore,  now  trying 
to  put  them  into  rime,  for  there  the  idea  is  seen  as  if  under 
a  veil,  and  the  immediate  effect  of  this  tremendous  material 
is  softened."  This,  however,  has  nothing  to  do  with  primitive 
conditions  of  poetry ;  the  simplicity  of  modern  prose  is  an 
effort  of  art,  and  belongs  with  the  intellectual  empire,  while 
rhythm,  particularly  in  its  early  form  of  repetition,  is  the 
immediate  and  spontaneous  expression  of  emotion,  and  likely 

^  Mingled  verse  and  prose  has  always  a  late,  artificial  manner;  for  example, 
the  Satura  Menippea,  imitated  in  Latin  by  Varro  and  Petronius  (Teufifel  and 
Schwabe,  Hist.  Roman  Literature,  trans.  Warr,  L  255),  and  claimed  for  the 
half-rhythmical  portion  of  Swift's  Battle  of  the  Books,  by  Feyerabend,  Englische 
Studicn,  XI.  487  ff.  Some  of  Feyerabend's  scanning,  by  the  way,  is  highly 
adventurous. 

"^Journal,  12  Mai,  1857. 

3  De  Arte  Poet.,  I.  75. 


74  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

to  be  more  pronounced  and  dominant  the  nearer  one  is  to 
the  primitive  state  of  things. 

What  Norden  really  does  is  to  scour  away  accretions  of 
silliness,  romantic  and  sentimental  phrases,  which  are  too 
often  held  as  part  and  parcel  of  a  sensible  belief  about  poetry 
in  its  early  stage.  Granted,  as  it  is  to  be  hoped  the  reader 
will  ultimately  grant,  that  singing  and  dancing  wax  in  im- 
portance as  one  traces  back  the  path  of  the  arts,  granted 
that  verse  and  song  covered  a  far  greater  field  of  activity 
in  the  beginning  than  they  cover  now,  the  notion  that  men 
with  language  in  a  fluent  state,  and  on  intellectual  topics, 
sang  instead  of  talking,  that  primitive  life  was  like  an  Italian 
opera-stage,  that  the  better  part  of  man's  utterance  was 
given  over  to  lyrical  wonder  at  the  sunset  and  the  stars,  — 
these  ideas,  even  when  hallowed  by  great  names,  must  be 
tossed  to  oblivion.  But  such  a  jettison  by  no  means  involves 
the  sinking  of  the  ship  itself  ;  to  change  the  figure,  gentle- 
men who  have  overthrown  a  minor  idol  or  so  must  not  loudly 
proclaim  that  they  have  razed  the  temple  and  rooted  out  the 
faith.  For  example,  Grimm  of  old  and  Kogel  of  late  ^  were 
too  fond  of  poetic  laws ;  the  former  confounded  quaintness 
with  beauty,  and  the  latter  discovered  too  much  rhythm.  The 
Frisian  code,  Kogel  seems  to  have  thought,  was  composed 
and  recited  as  poetry,  as  alliterative  verse.  Well,  this  is 
perhaps  Frisiomania  of  a  dangerous  kind,  and  Dr.  Siebs  ^  is 
within  his  rights  in  preaching  another  sermon  on  the  old 
but  dubious  text  of  Frisia  nou  cantat.  The  laws,  he  says, 
were  indeed  alliterative ;  but  they  were  neither  rhythmic 
nor  poetical.  So  far,  so  good;  the  advantage  seems  to  be 
on  the  side  of  Siebs ;  the  idol  totters  and  possibly  falls. 
But  now  to  pull   down  the   temple !       Whence   came   this 

^  In  Grimm's  charming  article  on  "  Poetry  in  Law,"  and  in  Kegel's  Geschichte 
der  deutschen  Litt.  I. 

2  Zeitschrift f.  deutsche  Philologie,  XXIX.  405  ff. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        75 

alliteration  ?  Like  rime,  it  is  a  product  of  prose,  declares 
the  iconoclast,  "  having,  in  the  first  place,  nothing  to  do  with 
poetry,"  and  probably  rising  in  answer  to  a  demand  of  the 
language  of  trade,  which  needed  to  lay  stress  on  the  em- 
phatic parts  of  one's  plea  for  a  good  bargain.  That  is,  the 
mainstay  of  all  Germanic  rhythm  is  a  "  drummer's  "  device, 
and  begins  in  the  shifty  phrases  of  the  early  Germanic  Jiausicrcr. 
This  is  a  world  of  broken  hopes.  Norden  for  rime,^  and 
Siebs  for  alliteration,  which  is  only  rime  of  another  sort, 
have  entered  a  terrific  caveat  against  the  historian  of  primi- 
tive song.  Is  rime,  then,  the  fine  flower  and  outgrowth  of 
a  stump-speech,  and  is  alliteration,  poor  changeling,  unmasked 
in  these  latter  days  as  an  intruder  and  an  alien  in  poetic  balls,  a 
by-blow  of  the  primitive  bagman  }  No,  the  temple  is  not  pulled 
down.  The  rhythmical  or  unrhythmical  character  of  Frisian 
laws  is  one  thing;  the  origin  of  rime,  the  functions  and  progress 
of  it,  cannot  be  even  guessed  on  the  basis  of  such  studies. 

Two  attempts,  however,  to  prove  the  priority  of  prose,  not 
by  the  classics,  not  by  folklore  alone,  not  by  alliterative 
laws,  but  by  ethnological  facts  and  by  comparative  methods, 
may  now  be  considered.  Poetry  as  a  whole,  says  Professor 
Biedermann,^  and  regarded  in  the  genetic  way,  was  not 
originally  bound  up  with  song,  not  even  with  rhythm.  Song, 
he  says,  does  not  make  poetry,  but  breaks  it,  disturbs  and 
corrupts  it.  Maori  and  Malay,  he  points  out,  simply  recite 
their  legends  and  poems ;  in  the  old  Persian,  as  in  the  old 
Japanese  poetry,  there  is  no  rhythm  to  be  found ;    and  he 

1  See  Norden's  Anhatig  on  Rime,  II.  810  ff.  It  may  be  noted  here  that  the 
fact  of  which  Norden  makes  so  much,  riming  of  inflectional  endings,  was 
pointed  out  by  Masing,  Ursprung  des  Reims,  Dorpat,  1S66,  pp.  15  f. 

2  In  a  review  of  Biicher's  Arbeit  und  Rhythmus  ;  see  Zeitschr.  f.  vergl.  Litter a- 
turgesch.,  N.  F.  II.  (1897)  3^9  ^-  This  is  another  darling  heresy,  —  to  break  up  the 
old  tradition  of  evolution,  and  to  deny  that  dance,  song,  poetry,  began  as  a  single  art. 
Yet  ethnology,  as  it  will  be  seen,  supports  this  tradition;  so  does  a  study  of  popular 
poetry.  Compare,  too,  Iliad,  XVIII.  569  flf.,  and  other  commonplaces,  for  the  classic 
traditions,  and  Aristotle's  famous  passage  on  Origins,  for  older  science  in  the  case. 


76  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

assures  his  reader  "that  attempts  to  prove  the  original  unity 
of  poetry,  music,  and  rhythm  have  come  'to  wrack," — a 
statement  which  needs  great  store  of  assurance  when  one 
considers  it  after  reading  the  book  under  review.  Bieder- 
mann's  own  theory  is  offered  in  a  nutshell.  Poetry  began 
as  mere  repetition,  without  music  or  rhythm,  a  parlous  and 
naked  state  indeed ;  the  taste  for  music  is  simply  a  chastened 
love  of  noise  ;  ^  while  rhythm  is  the  result  of  concerted  labour. 
That  in  after  ages  the  three  wanderers  now  and  then  met  and 
passed  the  time  of  day,  Biedermann  is  generous  enough  not 
to  deny. 

More  weighty  objections  are  to  be  found  in  an  article  by 
R.  de  la  Grasserie.^  Spoken  words,  he  says,  fall  into  prose 
as  expression  of  thought,  and  into  poetry  as  expression  of 
sentiment ;  prose  is  fundamental,  while  poetry  gets  its 
material  from  prose,  and  follows  it  in  point  of  time,  although 
it  is  conceded  that  the  full  development  of  poetry  precedes 
the  full  development  of  prose.  At  first  it  would  seem  that 
the  author  regarded  verse  as  essential  to  poetry  ;  the  poet 
and  the  verse-maker,  he  says,  must  be  united  as  a  single 
productive  power.  But  at  once  he  goes  on  to  ask  whether 
verse  be  the  sole  poetic  expression,  and  answers  in  the  nega- 
tive. Poetry  is  creation,  "  subjective  discovery  "  of  any  sort, 
as  opposed  to  the  objective  discoveries  of  science,  where 
nothing  is  created.  Didactic,  mnemonic  verse  is  not  poetry, 
for  it  is  merely  the  verse  that  is  mnemonic ;  and  the  reason 
why  poetry  has  come  to  be  confounded  with  versification  is 
simply  that  verse  was  needed  for  the  recording  or  memoriz- 
ing of  poetry.^     This  teleological  explanation  of  rhythm  is  a 

1  "  Dass  .  .  .  Musik  aus  clem  Gefallen  an  selbst  hervorgerufenen  Larm  sich 
entvvickelt  hat.  .  .  ." 

2  "  Essai  de  Rythmique  Comparee,"  in  Le  Museon,  X.  299  ff.,  419  ff.,  589  ff. 

'  Used  to  explain  the  actual  origin  of  rhythm  by  MUller  and  Schumann, 
Zeitschr.  f.  Psychol,  u.  Physiol,  d.  Sinnesorgane,  VI.  282  f.,  quoted  by  Meumann, 
Uvtersuchuiigen,  etc.,  pp.  10  f. 


RHYTHM    AS    THE   ESSENTIAL    FACT    OF   POETRY         -jy 

very  weak  joint  in  De  la  Grasserie's  armour;  it  shows  how 
easily  common  sense  can  make  itself  ridiculous  in  its  excess, 
a  tendency  commonly  ascribed  to  sentimental  and  enthusias- 
tic ideas  alone.  Facing  the  splendours  of  rhythm,  knowing 
how  it  has  held  itself  abreast  of  the  lordliest  doings  of  poetry, 
one  laughs  at  the  notion  that  its  only  credentials  on  Olympus 
should  be  its  mnemonic  convenience ;  and  De  la  Grasserie 
thrusts  his  explanation  handily  away  among  the  mists  of 
primitive  song.  Then  he  turns  to  his  theory  of  poetic  growth. 
Poetry  passed  through  three  stages  of  expression,  —  first, 
prose ;  next,  rhythmic  prose ;  last,  verse.  How  did  poetry 
begin  in  prose  .''  Well,  it  was  "  prose  a  courte  haleine,"  ^  prose 
with  thought-pauses  as  frequent  as  rhythmic  pauses,  so 
that  there  was  no  distinction  between  prose  and  verse,  —  and 
no  good  reason,  the  reader  is  tempted  to  add,  why  this 
same  prose  should  not  be  called  verse  outright.  Exactly 
what  thought-pauses  have  to  do  with  a  period  when  poetry 
consisted  in  the  indefinite  repetition  of  a  very  short  phrase 
or  even  of  a  single  word,  and  when,  by  ail  evidence,  the 
pause  is  rhythmic  entirely,  the  author  does  not  say  ;  he  is 
dealing  with  a  theory  and  not  with  facts,  and  so  he  assumes 
a  majestic  periodic  prose  as  primitive  utterance.  Next  after 
"prose"  came  "rhythmic  prose,"  and  then  verse;  but  the 
evolutionary  process  goes  on,  and  from  verse,  as  in  these 
latter  days,  one  turns  back  to  prose  in  rhythm,  and  yet  again 
to  prose  outright.  If  one  asks  for  a  bill  of  particulars,  if 
one  asks  how  verse  came  out  of  rhythmic  prose,  one  is  told 
that  two  propositions  may  have  had  the  same  number  of 
words,  just  as  in  Arabic,  just  as  in  the  Avesta^  —  that  the 
"two  propositions"  were  once  mere  repetition,  and  sung 
in  perfect  time  is,  of  course,  not  noted,  —  so  that  the  psychic 

^    See  Hoffmann's  similar  theory,  quoted  below. 

*  The  old  mistake  of  confounding  literal  chronology  with  evolution.     As  if  the 
Avesta  were  primitive ! 


78  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

pause  grows  to  be  one  with  the  rhythmic  pause.  But, 
accepting  the  impossible  terms  of  the  case,  what  proof  is 
offered  that  word-counting  and  syllable-counting  are  of  higher 
date  than  actual  rhythm  ?  Granting  this,  to  be  sure,  the 
next  step  is  easy  ;  interior  symmetry  now  comes  into  play, 
the  measure  of  feet,  the  perfect  rhythm  of  Greek  and  Latin 
verse.  What  cause,  then,  was  at  work  thus  to  develop 
verse  out  of  prose.''  Music  and  singing,  answers  the  ingen- 
ious essayist ;  but  the  ingenious  essayist  has  calmly  shut 
out  all  facts  save  such  as  suit  his  case,  and  one  is  curious  to 
know  what  he  would  do  with  ethnological  evidence  in  regard 
to  the  priority  and  primacy  of  dance  and  song.  Did  man 
come  to  this  fine  mastery  of  metres  and  this  subtle  sense  of 
quantities  before  he  had  begun  to  dance  to  his  own  singing  .'* 
If  M.  de  la  Grasserie  were  right,  if  Professor  Norden  were 
right,  in  this  plea  for  prose  as  the  parent  of  verse,  a  work  on 
the  beginnings  of  poetry  could  have  nothing  to  do  with  verse, 
and  only  a  little  to  do  with  rhythmic  prose.  Barring  the  way 
to  their  conclusions  stand  two  facts.  Rhythm  is  the  prime 
characteristic,  the  essential  condition,  of  the  dance,  and  oldest 
poetry  is  by  common  consent  found  in  close  alliance  with 
dance  and  song.  Secondly,  as  the  brilliant  essay  of  Bucher 
has  made  more  than  probable,  backed  as  it  is  by  evidence  of 
a  really  primitive  character,  and  not  by  theories  based  upon 
a  highly  developed  literature,  poetry  in  some  of  its  oldest 
forms,  older  indeed  than  that  supposed  period  of  earliest 
prose  which  M.  de  la  Grasserie  assumes  for  the  start,  was  not 
only  the  companion  but  the  offspring  of  labour.  In  postpon- 
ing rhythmic  utterance  to  the  third  great  period  of  the  devel- 
opment of  poetry,  the  champion  of  prose  origins  is  running 
counter  to  tradition,  counter  to  the  consent  of  science,  counter 
to  a  formidable  array  of  facts.     It  is  quite  wrong,  too,  to  say  ^ 

1  So  M.  de  la  Grasserie  asserts  in  an  ingenious  account  of  the  retrograde 
process  by  which  in  modern  times  poetry  has  retraced  its  old  evolution,  passing 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   79 

that  rhythm  nowadays  depends  upon  music  to  keep  it 
sound  and  alive ;  the  rhythm  of  Tennyson's  Bugle  Song, 
of  Kipling's  Recessional,  of  any  haunting  and  subtle  lyric, 
may  stir  the  composer  to  set  it  to  music,  but  in  no  way 
depends  upon  music  for  its  charm.  It  is  quite  as  wrong 
to  say  that  rhythm  is  less  effective  now  than  it  has  been  ; 
a  century  that  knew  Goethe,  Heine,  Shelley,  Tennyson, 
not  to  leave  Germanic  bounds,  has  no  concessions  to  make  in 
this  respect.  Moreover,  the  account  which  the  essayist  gives 
of  Arabic  verse,  as  developed  from  prose,  is  good  until 
another  account  turns  up, — say  that  of  M.  Hartmann,^ 
where  rhythm  is  beginning  and  end  of  the  matter ;  and 
it  happens  that  this  account  is  by  an  Arabic  scholar  of 
repute. 

Considered  in  all  fairness,  these  attacks  have  not  shaken 
the  belief  in  rhythm  as  something  that  lies  at  the  heart  of 
poetry.  They  may  well  brush  aside  some  absurdity  of 
romantic  origin,  but  they  fail  to  make  probable  or  even  pos- 
sible a  theory  which  would  overthrow  a  settled  literary 
tradition  touching  all  quarters  of  the  globe.  It  cannot  be  said 
that  Norden  has  proved  the  growth  of  poetry  out  of  prose 
even  in  the  rhetorical  clauses  of  oratory.  From  Longinus^ 
one  learns  that  an  oration  among  the  Greeks  had  rhythm, 
although  it  was  not  metrical,  and  in  its  delivery  stopped  just 
short  of  singing ;  so  that  one  may  concede  that  the  speech  of 
an  orator  carried  to  an  extreme  would  give  song,  while  his 
harmonious  gestures,  an  art  now  as  good  as  lost,  needed  but 
little  more  action  and  detail  to  become  what  the  Greeks  knew 
as  a  dance.  But  does  any  one  pretend  to  say  that  singing 
and  dancing  spring  from  individual  oratory .''     Orators  now 

from  verse  back  through  rhythmic  prose  to  prose  outright.  The  only  use  which 
he  now  concedes  to  verse  is  in  .  .  .  the  opera.  In  all  other  fields,  —  epic,  drama, 
lyric,  —  he  thinks  it  is  dead  as  King  Pandion. 

^  Die  Enistehutig  der  arabuchen  Versmasse,  Giessen,  1896. 

^  A  remarkable  passage.     See  the  translation  of  Roberts,  p.  149. 


8o  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

and  then  still  sing  or  chant  in  their  speeches.  One  would 
like  to  know  more  about  the  sermons  which  Dr.  Fell  preached 
"  in  blank  verse  "  ;  ^  and  one  is  in  doubt  whether  this  phrase, 
along  with  Selden's  sneer  ^  at  those  who  "preach  inverse," 
meant  a  distinct  metrical  order  of  words  or  only  a  sing-song  of 
the  voice —  literally  "  cant,"  as  in  the  Puritan  sermons  and  in 
the  chant  common  not  long  ago  with  preachers  of  the  Society 
of  Friends.  Any  one  who  has  heard  this  "  singing "  of 
hortatory  speech  knows  that  the  rhythms  of  regular  verse,  of 
song  and  dance,  could  not  possibly  be  derived  from  it.  Each 
form  of  development  must  be  studied  for  itself  under  the 
control  of  ethnological  and  sociological  facts ;  and  the  written 
oration,  with  its  cadences,  goes  back  to  the  orator  and  his 
listening  crowd,  just  as  the  written  poem  goes  back  to  the 
improvising  poet,  and  through  him  to  the  dancing  communal 
throng.  The  attempt  to  derive  exact  rhythms  of  poetry  from 
loose  rhythms  of  oratorical  speech  has  failed ;  it  remains  to 
show  how  these  exact  rhythms  spring  from  primitive  song, 
dance,  and  labour,  mainly  under  communal  conditions,  and 
that  exact  rhythm  lies  at  the  heart  of  poetry.  There  are 
two  social  situations  to  be  taken  for  granted.  It  is  natural 
for  one  person  to  speak  or  even  to  sing,  and  for  ninety-nine 
persons  to  listen.     It  is  also  natural  for  a  hundred  persons, 

1  Evelyn's  Diary,  24  February,  1664-1665  :  "  Dr.  Fell,  Canon  of  Christ  Church, 
preached  before  the  king  ...  a  very  formal  discourse,  and  in  blank  verse, 
according  to  his  manner." 

2  The  whole  passage  is  interesting  with  its  fling  at  poetry,  not,  however,  to  be 
taken  as  a  serious  indictment :  Table  Talk,  ed.  Arber,  p.  85  :  "  'Tis  a  fine  thing 
for  children  to  learn  to  make  verse;  but  when  they  come  to  be  men,  they  must 
speak  like  other  men,  or  else  they  will  be  laugh't  at.  Tis  ridiculous  to  speak,  or 
write,  or  preach  in  verse."  Again,  "  Tis  ridiculous  for  a  Lord  to  print  verses,  'tis 
well  enough  to  make  them  to  please  himself,  but  to  make  them  publick  is  foolish. 
If  a  man  in  his  private  chamber  twirls  his  bandstrings,  or  plays  with  a  rush  to 
please  himself,  'tis  well  enough;  but  if  he  should  go  into  Fleet  Street,"  —  and  so 
on.  He  thinks  there  is  no  reason  why  plays  should  be  in  verse;  but  he  rescues 
the  old  poets  who  were  forced  to  write  verse  "  because  their  verse  was  sung  to 
music." 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   8 1 

under  strong  emotion,  to  shout,  sing,  dance,  in  concert  and 
as  a  throng,  not  as  a  matter  of  active  and  passive,  of  give 
and  take,  but  in  common  consent  of  expression.  The  second 
situation,  still  familiar  now  and  then,  is  discouraged  hy 
civilized  conditions,  although,  as  foundation  of  social  consent, 
it  must  have  preceded  the  other  situation  and  must  have  been 
of  far  greater  frequency  and  importance  in  the  beginnings  of 
social  life.  It  is  this  state  of  things  which  writers  like  Norden 
fail  to  take  into  account ;  and  it  is  this  state  of  things,  with 
its  communal  consent  resting  on  the  vital  and  unifying  fact 
of  rhythm,  which  is  now  to  be  positively  proved  by  the 
evidence  of  ethnology,  the  conclusions  of  sociology,  and  the 
controlling  sense  of  evolution  in  poetical  as  in  social  progress. 
In  treating  the  positive  side  of  such  a  subject,  one  turns 
instinctively  to  the  latest  word  of  science ;  and  it  would  seem 
that  the  method  which  combines  physical  facts  with  psycho- 
logical processes  ought  to  be  an  adequate  court  of  appeal. 
Dr.  Ernst  Meumann  has  undertaken  a  study  of  this  sort  with 
regard  to  rhythm ;  ^  but  his  investigations  do  little  for  the 
historical  and  genetic  side  of  the  case.  From  his  essay,  to 
be  sure,  one  learns  much  that  is  of  value,  and  one  is  made  to 
see  that  certain  views  of  rhythm  heretofore  in  vogue  must 
be  considerably  modified  ;  for  the  main  question  of  primitive 
rhythm,  however,  and  for  historical  purposes  at  large,  one 
can  here  learn  nothing,  since  Meumann  uses  in  his  research 
only  that  declamatory  style  of  reciting  poetry  by  which  the 
rhythm  is  always  disguised  and  usually  suppressed.^  He 
denies  Paul's  assertion  that  rhythmic  measures  in  a  verse  are  of 
equal  duration,  —  a  traditional  statement,  —  because  Brucke's 
famous  experiments,  to  which  Paul  appeals,  were  made  upon 

^  Untersnchunge7i  ztir  Psychologie  tind  Aesihetik  des  Rhythmtts,  Leipzig,  1894; 
reprinted  from  Vol.  X.  of  Wundt's  Philosophische  Studien. 

^  See    p.    77,   where    he    chooses    "  die    Freiheit    des    declamirten    Rhythmus 
gegeniiber  dem  allgemeinen  rh\thmischen  Princip  der  Regelmassiglveit."'     See 
also  pp.  82,  87,  loi,  and  especially  91. 
a 


82  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

folk  who  "  scanned "  their  verses  and  did  not  recite  them. 
But,  for  the  purposes  just  named,  it  is  begging  the  question 
when  Meumann  rejects  the  scanning  of  verse  as  something 
"counter  to  the  nature  of  poetic  material."  What  is  the 
nature  of  poetic  material,  —  essentially  rhythmic,  or  essen- 
tially free  from  rhythm  ?  All  reports  of  primitive  singing, 
that  is,  of  singing  among  races  on  a  low  plane  of  culture, 
make  rhythm  a  wholly  insistent  element  of  the  verse ;  and 
when  a  logical  explanation  which  fits  modern  facts  is  at  odds 
with  the  chronological  course  of  things,  then  the  danger  sig- 
nal is  up  for  any  wary  student.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  Meu- 
mann could  make  experiments  on  nothing  but  a  modern 
reading  of  poetry,  and  it  was  natural  that  he  should  choose 
the  sort  of  reciting  most  in  vogue ;  his  results  in  such  a  case, 
however,  can  be  valid  only  for  modern  conditions.  Poetry, 
for  purposes  of  public  entertainment,  is  mainly  read  in  the 
free,  declamatory  style.  This,  to  be  sure,  is  not  the  way  in 
which  Tennyson,  a  master  of  poetic  form,  recited  his  verses ; 
it  is  not  the  way  in  which  one  reads,  or  ought  to  read,  lyric 
poems  generally,  where  even  the  most  ruthless  and  resolute 
Herod  of  "  elocution  "  finds  it  impossible  to  slay  all  the  meas- 
ures of  three  syllables  and  under ;  and,  by  overwhelming 
evidence,  it  is  not  the  way  of  quite  savage  folk,  who  dance 
and  sing  their  verses.  It  is  not  even  the  way  of  races  in 
more  advanced  stages  of  culture,^  who  recited  their  verses 
with  strong  rhythmical  accents,  using  a  harp,  or  some  instru- 
ment of  the  sort,  for  additional  emphasis.  Rhythm  is 
obscured  or  hidden  by  declamation  only  in  times  when  the 
eye  has  usurped  the  functions  of  the  ear,  and  when  a  highly 
developed  prose  makes  the  accented  rhythm  of  poetry  seem 

1  For  example,  classical  rendering  of  verse,  and  even  modern  recitation,  as 
among  the  Italians.  "  La  plupart  des  Italiens  ont,  en  lisant  les  vers,  une  sorte  de 
chant  monotone,  appcle  catitilene,  qui  detruit  toute  emotion,"  says  Mme.  de  Stael, 
Corinne,  Chap.  III.;  but  the  "elocutionary"  emotion  is  usually  an  impertinence 
in  simple  and  cadenced  lyric. 


RHYTHM    AS    THE    ESSENTIAL   FACT    OF   POETRY        83 

either  old-fashioned  or  a  sign  of  childhood.  Not  that  one 
wishes  to  restore  a  sing-song  reading,  but  rather  a  recogni- 
tion of  metrical  structure,  of  those  subtle  effects  in  rhythm 
which  mean  so  much  in  the  poet's  art ;  verse,  in  a  word,  par- 
ticularly lyric  verse,  must  not  be  read  as  if  it  were  prose. 
Dramatic  verse  is  a  difficult  problem.  French  and  German 
actors  mainly  ignore  the  rhythm ;  on  the  Parisian  stage, 
competent  critics  say,  whole  pages  of  comedy  or  tragedy 
may  be  recited  with  exquisite  feeling,  and  yet  without  let- 
ting one  know  whether  it  is  verse  or  prose  that  one  hears. 
For  in  drama  one  wishes  nowadays  to  hear  not  rhythm,  but 
the  thought,  the  story,  the  point ;  imagine  Sheridan's  come- 
dies in  verse !  Even  in  tragedy  dull  emotions  are  now  to  be 
roused,  not  keen  emotions  soothed ;  or  rather  it  is  thought, 
penetrated  by  emotion,  to  be  sure,  but  thought,  and  not  the 
cadence  which  once  soothed  and  carried  off  the  emotion,  — 
thought,  indeed,  as  the  comment  and  gloss  on  emotion, — in 
which  a  modern  world  wishes  to  find  its  consolations  and 
its  aesthetic  pleasure.  As  thought  recedes,  as  one  comes 
nearer  to  those  primitive  emotions  which  were  untroubled  by 
thought,  they  get  expression  more  and  more  in  cadenced 
tones.  And,  again,  this  cadenced  emotional  expression,  as 
it  grows  stronger,  grows  wider ;  the  barriers  of  irony  and 
reserve  which  keep  a  modern  theatre  tearless  in  the  face  of 
Lear's  most  pathetic  utterance,  break  down ;  first,  as  one 
recedes  from  modern  conditions,  comes  the  sympathetic  emo- 
tion of  the  spectators  expressed  in  sighs  and  tears,  —  one 
thinks  of  those  performances  in  Germany  a  century  and  a 
half  ago,  and  the  prodigious  weeping  that  went  on,  —  so  that 
the  emotional  expression  is  echoed  ;  then  comes  the  partial 
activity  of  the  spectators  by  their  deputed  chorus ;  and  at 
last  the  throng  of  primitive  times,  common  emotion  in  com- 
mon expression,  with  no  spectators,  no  audience,  no  reserve 
or  comment  of  thought, —  for  thought  is  absorbed  in  the  per- 


84  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

ception  and  action  of  communal  consent ;  ^  and  here,  by  all 
evidence,  rhythm  rules  supreme.  Go  back  to  these  condi- 
tions, and  what  have  the  tricks  of  individual  accent,  the  em- 
phasis of  logic,  the  artistic  contrasts,  the  comphcated  process 
of  interpretation,  to  do  with  social  or  gregarious  poetry,  with 
primitive  song,  with  the  rhythmic  consent  of  that  swaying, 
dancing  multitude  uttering  a  common  emotion  as  much  by 
the  cadence  of  step  and  cry  as  by  articulate  words?  Ethnol- 
ogy will  be  heard  in  abundance ;  a  word  or  two  may  be  in 
place  from  comparative  literature  and  philology,  and  a  con- 
trolling idea,  a  curve  of  evolution,  may  be  found  in  this 
way  if  one  takes  a  long  stretch  of  poetic  development  in 
some  race  just  forging  to  the  front  of  civilized  life.  Song, 
one  may  assert,  passes  naturally  into  a  sort  of  chant,  espe- 
cially as  the  epic  form  of  poetry  takes  shape,  into  a  saying 
rather  than  a  singing,  and  then  into  an  even  easier  move- 
ment. There  seems  to  be  little  doubt  that  the  recitation  of 
classical  poetry  was  a  matter  of  scanning,  an  utterance  which 
brought  out  the  metre  of  the  verse ;  even  advocates  of  prose 
as  the  forerunner  of  poetry  grant  that  the  ancient  writers 
made  a  careful  distinction  between  the  two,  and  always 
recited  metre  as  metre.  Emphasis,  moreover,  due  to  the 
regular  steps  of  the  original  dance,  is  still  heard  in  that  pop- 
ular verse  of  four  measures  which  long  held  its  place  in 
Greek,  Latin,  Germanic,  and  other  languages  ;  once  it  accom- 
panied the  dancing  throng,  and  by  Westphal's  reckoning  ^ 
consisted  of  eight  steps  forward  and  as  many  backward,  so 

J  Compare  Lessing's  different  but  analogous  antithesis  in  the  Laokoon,  XI. : 
"  Bei  dem  Artisten  diinkt  uns  die  Ausfiihrung  schwerer  als  die  Erfindung;  bei 
dem  Dichter,  hingegen,  ist  es  umgekehrt." 

2  See  his  article  in  Kuhn's  Zeitschr.  f.  vergl.  Sprach.,  IX.  437  ff.;  and  the 
second  volume  of  his  Metrik  der  Griechen.  For  the  four-accent  verse  as  popular 
measure,  see  H.  Usener,  Altgriechischer  Versbau,  Bonn,  1887,  a  suggestive  book. 
For  the  same  verse  in  Russian,  see  Bistrom  in  the  Zeitsch.  f.  Volkerpsychol., 
V.  185. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        85 

that  the  companion  sounds  of  the  voice  made  two  verses 
with  four  pairs  of  syllables  in  each  verse,  right  and  left  in 
step,  with  one  syllable  bearing  the  emphasis.  Bergk  in  1854 
assumed  that  the  hexameter  is  a  combination  of  two  such 
verses ;  Usener,  correcting  Bergk's  details,  added  the  Nibel- 
ungen  verse  as  made  in  the  same  way  from  two  "popular" 
verses,  that  is,  from  the  common  Aryan  metre,  and  called 
this  a  "mark  of  the  oldest  European  verse "  ^  wherever 
found,  still  lingering  in  the  folksongs  of  many  peoples. 
Bruchmann,  noting  its  occurrence  with  Malays,  Esthonians, 
Tartars,  concludes  that  the  verse  is  thus  prevalent  because 
of  its  convenience  for  the  breath ;  it  is  neither  too  short  nor 
too  long.  If,  now,  the  curve  of  evolution  in  Aryan  verse 
begins  with  an  absolutely  strict  rhythm  and  alternate  empha- 
sis of  syllables,  often,  as  in  Iranian,^  to  the  neglect  of  logical 
considerations ;  if  the  course  of  poetry  is  to  admit  logical 
considerations  more  and  more,  forcing  in  at  least  one  case 
the  abandoning  of  movable  accent  and  the  agreement  of 
verse-emphasis  with  syllabic  emphasis,  an  undisputed  fact ;  if 
poetry,  too,  first  shakes  off  the  steps  of  dancing,  then  the 
notes  of  song,  finally  the  strict  scanning  of  the  verse,  until 
now  recited  poetry  is  triumphantly  logical,  with  rhythm  as  a 
subconscious  element ;  if,  finally,  this  process  exactly  agrees 
with  the  gradual  increase  of  thought  over  emotion,  with  the 
analogous  increase  of  solitary  poetry  over  gregarious  poetry, 
—  then,  surely,  one  has  but  to  trace  back  this  curve  of  evolu- 
tion, and  to  project  it  into  prehistoric  conditions,  in  order  to 
infer  with  something  very  close  to  certitude  that  rhythm  is 
the  primal  fact  in  the  beginnings  of  the  poetic  art.     Such  a 

^  Wilmanns  thinks  the  case  for  this  "  original "  verse  has  not  been  made  out 
in  any  convincing  way. 

2  F.  D.  Allen,  in  Kuhn's  Zeitsch.  f.  jtergl.  Sprach.,  XXIV.  558  if.,  showed  that 
this  Iranian  syllable-counting  verse,  one  of  the  oldest  of  metres,  is  not  merely 
counting,  but  a  rhythmic  affair,  and  that  the  rhythm  lay  in  successive  equal 
intervals  marked  bv  verse  accent. 


86  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

curve  is  assumed  as  true  by  two  Germanic  scholars  who  dif- 
fer absolutely  with  regard  to  certain  questions  of  chronology. 
When  did  the  rhythmic,  measured  chant  of  Germanic  poetry 
pass  into  free  recited  verse  ?  Before  the  date  of  such  oldest 
Germanic  poetry  as  is  preserved,  answers  Professor  Sievers ; 
not  until  later,  answers  Professor  Moller.  Sievers,  it  is  well 
known,  declares  the  Germanic  alliterative  verse,  as  it  lies 
before  us,  to  have  been  spoken  and  not  chanted ;  Moller 
insists  on  strophes  and  a  rhythmical  chant.  To  maintain 
his  view,  Moller^  brings  forward  certain  facts.  Germanic 
poetry  was  at  first  mainly  choral  and  communal  song,  poetry 
of  masses  of  men,  the  concentiis,  mentioned  by  Tacitus,  of 
warriors  moving  into  battle,  or  of  a  tribe  dancing  at  their 
religious  rites.  A  concentiis  of  warriors  in  chorus  of  battle, 
he  notes  quite  happily,  is  meant  not  so  much  to  terrify  the 
foe  as  to  strengthen  and  order  their  own  emotions,  precisely, 
one  may  add,  as  the  communal  songs  which  led  to  the  Hel- 
lenic chorus,  and  so  to  tragedy,  were  at  first  a  matter  of 
social  expression  altogether,  and  not  an  artistic  effort  made 
by  a  few  active  persons  for  the  entertainment  of  a  great  pas- 
sive throng.  So,  too,  Moller  goes  on  to  remark,  song  in 
mass  is  song  in  movement;  and  here  a  regular  cadence 
or  rhythm  must  be  the  first,  the  absolute  condition.  "To 
say  that  primitive  Aryans  had  neither  poetry  nor  song  — 
and  nobody  says  it — would  be  like  saying  that  they  had  no 
speech ;  to  say  that  their  poetry  —  and  poetry  is  poetry 
only  when  marked  by  regular  rhythm  —  had  no  regular 
rhythm,  is  almost  as  much  as  to  say  that  their  speech  did 
not  go,  even  unconsciously,  by  grammatical  rules."  So  far 
Moller. 

What  has  Sievers  to  say  against  this }     Does  he  prove  his 
sprechvortrag,  the  declamatory  recitation  of  verse,  by  assum- 

^  Zur  althochdeutchen  Alliterationspoesie,  i888,  pp.  109  ff.,  particularly  146  ff., 
"  iiber  den  Takt." 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        8/ 

ing  with  Wilmanns  ^  that  Germanic  verse  is  not  developed 
from  any  common  Aryan  rhythm,  but  rather  springs,  as 
Norden  asserted  that  all  verse  springs,  from  the  correspond- 
ing parts  of  balanced  sentences  in  prose  ?  By  no  means. 
Wilmanns  argues  that  this  "  common  Aryan  inheritance," 
the  verse  of  four  accents,  has  not  been  proved  as  a  fact,  and 
has  been  simply  set  up  as  a  theory  ;  moreover,  if  it  is  proved, 
then  one  must  assume  that  the  Germanic  lost  it,  "  for  the 
four  accents  appear  only  in  later  development."  Because 
the  alliterative  verse  follows  forms  and  tones  of  ordinary 
speech,  Wilmanns  makes  it  a  modification  of  that  speech, 
an  outgrowth  of  prose.  But  that  such  a  development  is 
unnatural  and  contrary  to  facts  as  well  as  to  common  sense, 
that  song  of  the  masses  is  the  earHest  song,  that  it  must  be 
strictly  rhythmic,  that  it  passes  later  into  rhythmic  recitation, 
and  then  into  free,  declamatory  recitation,  —  all  this  is  so 
clear  to  Sievers,  however  it  may  seem  to  work  against  his 
own  theory,  as  in  Moller's  argument,  that  he  casts  about  for 
a  true  explanation  of  alliterative  verse  with  two  accents  as  the 
outcome  of  that  assumed  Aryan  verse  of  four  accents.  On 
a  hint  from  Saran,^  Sievers  assumes  that  Germanic  poetry 
had  already  made  the  step  from  strophes,  which  were  chanted 
or  sung  in  half-verses  with  four  accents,  and  with  a  regular 
rhythm,  to  continuous  or  stichic  verses  with  halves  of  two 
accents,  and  with  free  rhythmic  structure  fitted  for  saying 
rather  than  for  singing.  So  it  might  well  have  gone  with 
the  hexameter ;  two  verses  with  four  accents  each  became 
one  verse  of  six  accents,  and  this  had  the  swing  and  freedom 
of  spoken  poetry.  Now  whether  Sievers  is  right  or  wrong 
in  all  this  is  apart  from  the  question  in  hand ;  it  is  simply  a 
matter  of  evolution  on  the  lines  already  indicated,  and  of  the 

^  Beitrage  zur  Geschichte  der  alter  en   deutschen  Liiteraiur,  III.,   "  Der   alt- 
deutsche  Reimvers,"  Bonn,  1887,  pp.  141  f. 

"  Sievers,  Altgermanische  Metrik,  1893,  pp.  172  ff. 


88  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

stage  in  that  evolution  to  which  Germanic  verse  had  come. 
On  the  priority  of  strictly  rhythmic  verse  ^  sung  by  masses 
of  men,  both  Sievers  and  Moller  are  agreed. 

Modern  individual  recitation,  then,  by  this  evidence  of 
philology  and  by  the  sense  of  evolution  in  poetic  form,  can 
be  no  criterion  for  primitive  poetry ;  hence  the  inadequate 
character  of  such  investigations  into  the  nature  of  poetic 
rhythm  as  neglect  the  facts  offered  by  ethnology  and  by 
comparative  literature.  One  must  not  neglect  choral  and 
communal  conditions  when  one  deals  with  primitive  verse. 
For  a  study  of  modern  epic  and  dramatic  verse  as  it  is  read 
aloud  or  declaimed,  for  a  study  even  of  verse  on  the  Shak- 
sperian  stage,  Meumann's  essay  is  useful  in  many  respects ; 
it  is  useless  for  the  study  of  rhythm  in  that  larger  sweep  of 
poetic  origins  and  growth. 

We  must  turn,  then,  to  scientific  material  which  deals  with 
primitive  stages  of  human  life.  A  very  primitive,  perhaps  a 
pre-primitive  stage  of  human  life  is  involved  in  Darwin's 
theory,  stated  in  his  Descent  of  Man,  reaffirmed  briefly  in  his 
book  on  the  expression  of  emotions,  and  adopted  by  Scherer 
for  the  explanation  of  poetic  origins,  that  a  study  of  sexual 
calls  from  male  to  female  among  animals  might  unlock  the 
secret  of  primitive  rhythm.  This,  as  has  been  said,  will  lead 
to  no  good.  Love  songs,  the  supposed  development  of  such 
calls,  actually  diminish  and  disappear  as  one  retraces  the 
path  of  verse  and  comes  to  low  stages  of  human  progress,  to 
savage  poetry  at  large ;  ^  the  curve  of  evolution  is  against 
recourse  to  facts  such  as  Darwin  would  find  convincing ;  and 
those  "  long  past  ages  when  .  .  .  our  early  progenitors 
courted  each  other  by  the  aid  of  vocal  tones,"  are  less  help- 

1  That  strophic  hymns  were  known  in  earliest  Germanic  poetry  is  shown, 
Sievers  points  out,  by  the  fact  that  Middle  High  German  liet\%  the  same  as  Old 
Norse  Ijd'S,  "  strophe."  For  the  old  choral  poetry,  he  says,  "  wird  ein  im  gleichen 
Takte  fortschreitender  Sangesvortrag  ohne  weiteres  zuzugeben  sein,"  Ibid.,  p.  20, 

■2  Above,  p.  8,  and  Crosse,  Anfdnge,  p.  233. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY    89 

ful  to  the  understandingof  rhythm  and  poetry,  when  restored 
in  such  furtive  and  amiable  moments,  than  when  they  present 
the  primitive  horde  in  festal  dance  and  song,  finding  by 
increased  ease  of  movement  and  economy  of  force,  by  keener 
sense  of  kind,  by  delight  of  repetition,  the  possibilities  of  that 
social  consent  which  is  born  of  rhythmic  motion.  Scherer, 
indeed,  saw  how  much  more  this  social  consent  and  this 
festal  excitement  have  to  do  with  the  matter,  and  undertook 
to  fix  the  origin  of  poetry  in  an  erotic  and  pantomimic  choral, 
such  as  one  still  finds  in  certain  obscene  Australian  dances  ;  ^ 
but  the  erotic  impulse  is  not  social,  save  in  some  questionable 
exceptions  ;  and  social  consent,  as  Donovan  has  shown,  began 
rather  on  public  and  frankly  social  occasions,  like  the  dance 
of  a  horde  after  victory  in  war.^ 

Sociological  considerations,  again,  have  weight  with  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  ^  when  he  finds,  like  Norden,  but  for  differ- 
ent reasons,  that  rhythm,  as  used  in  poetry  and  in  music,  is 
developed  out  of  highly  emotional  and  passionate  speech. 
This  doctrine  of  Mr.  Spencer  has  been  denied  on  musical 
grounds,  and  must  be  denied  still  more  strongly  on  ethno- 
logical grounds.  The  objections  on  musical  grounds  brought 
forward  by  Mr.  Gurney,'*  are  difficult  to  answer,  and  one  is 
bound  to  admit  that  Mr.  Spencer  has  not  answered  them 
convincingly  in  the  essay  of  1890;  moreover,  in  making 
recitative  a  step  between  speech  and  song,  he  is  not  only 
ignoring  communal  singing,  but  is  reversing  the  facts  of  an 
evolutionary  process.    To  develop  song  out  of  an  impassioned 

^  See  above,  p.  8,  note. 

-  Other  motions  than  that  of  the  communal  dance  may  induce  rhythm.  The 
movement  of  labour  will  be  considered  in  detail;  but  it  may  be  noted  here  that 
swinging,  a  solitary  performance,  tempts  the  savage  of  Borneo  to  sing  a  monotonous 
song  and  ask  the  spirits  for  a  good  crop  (Bruchmann,  Poetik,  p.  18). 

3  See  "The  Origin  and  Function  of  Music,''  Essays,  1857;  "The  Origin  of 
Music,"  in  Mind,  XV.  (1890)  449  fT. ;  and  a  note  on  certain  criticisms  of  this 
article.  Mind,  XVI.  535  ff. 

*  The  Power  of  Sound,  London,  1880,  pp.  476  ff. 


90  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

speech  is  plausible  enough  until  one  fronts  this  primitive 
horde  dancing,  singing,  shouting  in  cadence,  with  a  rhythm 
which  the  analogy  of  ethnological  evidence  and  the  facts  of 
comparative  literature  prove  to  have  been  exact.  ^  In  Mr. 
Spencer's  essay  of  1857,  the  "  connate  "  character  of  dancing, 
poetry,  and  music  is  emphasized  ;  but  the  choral,  communal 
element  is  unnoticed.  Precisely  such  social  conditions,  how- 
ever, controlled  the  beginning  of  poetry,  and  the  main  factor 
in  them  seems  to  have  been  the  exact  rhythm  of  communal 
consent.  Against  the  evidence  for  communal  rhythm  little  can 
be  urged  ;  and  the  few  cases  brought  forward  for  this  purpose 
by  Biedermann  not  only  rest  on  imperfect  observation  but 
often  prove  to  be  contradictory  in  the  form  of  the  statement. 
So,  too,  with  other  evidence.  Burchell,  for  example,  said  that 
the  Bushmen  in  singing  and  dancing  showed  an  exact  sense  of 
rhythm ;  while  Daumas  said  that  they  never  danced  except 
after  heavy  meals,  and  then  in  wild,  disordered  fashion,  with 
no  rhythm  at  all.  Grosse^  throws  out  this  negative  evidence 
as  counter  to  overwhelming  evidence  on  the  other  side.  Again, 
one  often  finds  a  statement  which  denies  rhythm  to  savage 
poetry,  nevertheless  affirming  most  exact  rhythm  in  the  songs 
or  cries  to  which  the  savages  dance.  Here  is  evidently  a  con- 
fusion of  the  communal  "  poem  "  or  song,  and  the  individual 
tale  or  what  not  chanted  in  a  kind  of  recitative.  It  may  be  con- 
cluded from  a  careful  study  of  ethnological  evidence  that  all 
savage  tribes  have  the  communal  song,  and  most  of  them  have 
the  recitative.  Silent  folk  who  do  nothing  of  the  sort,  tribes 
that  neither  sing  nor  dance,  must  not  be  brought  into  the  argu- 
ment ;  if  they  do  occur,  and  the  negative  fact  is  always  hard 
to  estabhsh,  they  arc  clearly  too  abnormal  to  count.  Human 
intelligence  is  not  measured  by  the  idiot.    These  are  decadent 

1  This  is  the  basis  of  Wallaschek's  convincing  argument  against  Mr.  Spencer's 
theory:   Primitive  Music,  London,  1893,  pp.  251  ff. 

2  Anf'dnge  der  Kunst,  p.  206,  note. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY       91 

groups,  extreme  degenerates,  links  severed  from  the  chain ;  and 
no  one  will  summon  as  witnesses  for  the  primitive  stage  of 
poetry  those  Charruas  of  Uruguay,  who  are  said  to  have  no 
dance,  no  song,  no  social  amusements,  who  speak  only  in  a 
whisper,  "are  covered  with  vermin,"  and  know  neither  religion 
nor  laws,  —  in  a  word,  no  social  existence,  and  almost  no  human- 
ity. So  one  comes  back  to  the  normal  folk.  East  Africans^  are 
reported  to  have  "  no  metrical  songs,"  and  they  sing  in  recita- 
tive ;  but  at  once  it  is  added  that  they  dance  in  crowds  to  the 
rhythm  of  their  own  voices,  as  well  as  to  the  drum,  moving  in 
cadence  with  the  songs  which  they  sing :  and  here  can  be 
no  recitative.  ^  Moreover,  when  cleaning  rice,  they  work  to 
the  rhythm  of  songs,  to  foot-stamping  and  hand-clapping  of 
the  bystanders,  —  in  other  words,  choral  dance,  choral  song, 
exact  time,  rhythm  absolute ;  although,  by  culling  a  bit  here 
and  there,  the  theorist  could  have  presented  fine  evidence 
from  Bushmen  and  East  Africans  that  savages  in  low  levels 
of  culture  have  no  rhythm  in  their  songs,  and  dance  without 
consent  or  time.  True,  there  is  the  recitative,  and  that,  as  a 
thing  interesting  to  Europeans,  is  pushed  into  the  foreground 
of  the  traveller's  account.  Yet  this  recitative  of  the  singer 
who  does  a  turn  for  the  missionary  or  other  visitor  is  not  the 
main  fact  in  the  case,  although  it  is  often  the  only  fact  of  the 
sort  that  is  set  down.  It  may  be  cheerfully  conceded  that 
the  recitative  occurs  among  savage  tribes  throughout  the 
world  ;  but  the  manner  of  its  occurrence  must  be  considered. 
Along  with  choral  singing,  in  intervals  of  the  dance,  some 
person  chants  a  sentence  or  two  in  a  fashion  usually  described 
as  recitative.  One  would  like  to  know  more  of  this  chant- 
ing ;  but  sometimes  it  is  without  exact  rhythm  or  measure, 
and  will  not  "  scan "  in  any  regular  way.  So,  too,  with 
music  itself ;  most  of  the  ruder  tribes,  as  Wallaschek  points 

1  Wallaschek,  Primitive  .1/usic,  p.  11. 

^  See  the  positive  statement  uf  Dr.  Jacobsthal,  quoted  above,  p.  69. 


92  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

out/  know  both  systems  of  music,  the  rhythmic  and  the 
"free."  On  the  Friendly  Islands  natives  have  two  kinds  of 
song,  "  those  similar  to  our  recitative,  and  others  in  regular 
measure."  African  singers  tell  a  tale  of  their  wanderings 
"in  an  emphatic  recitative  "  ;  but  the  choral  songs  are  always 
sung  in  exact  rhythm  to  the  dance.  Not  only,  too,  with 
savages  ;  hasty  generalizations  and  inexact  statements  due  to 
this  double  character  of  singing  have  robbed  more  advanced 
peoples  of  the  rhythmical  sense.  A  Swedish  writer'^  telling 
about  the  Lapps  and  what  seemed  to  him  their  lack  of  any 
idea  of  melody,  quotes  one  Blom,  who  "  denies  that  the  Lapps 
have  any  sense  for  rhythm."  Why.?  They  cannot  keep 
harmony ;  of  six  or  eight,  no  two  agree,  and  each  is  a  bit 
above  or  below  the  rest,  —  not  a  question  of  rhythm,  then, 
and  alien  to  the  case.  Scarcely  any  savages  have  the  sense  of 
melody  and  harmony,  although  their  sense  of  exact  rhythm 
is  universal  and  profound. 

It  is  not  hard  to  follow  so  plain  a  hint  as  one  finds  in  the 
ethnological  evidence ;  and  it  is  clear  that  recitative  is  a 
matter  of  the  individual  singer,  while  to  choral  singing  it  is 
unknown  and  from  the  nature  of  the  case  impossible.  As 
the  savage  laureate  slips  from  the  singing,  dancing  crowd, 
which  turns  audience  for  the  nonce,  and  gives  his  short  im- 
provisation, only  to  yield  to  the  refrain  of  the  chorus,  so  the 
actual  habit  of  individual  composition  and  performance  has 
sprung  from  the  choral  composition  and  performance.  The 
improvisations  and  the  recitative  are  short  deviations  from 
the  main  road,  beginnings  of  artistry,  which  will  one  day 
become  journeys  of  the  solitary  singer  over  pathless  hills  of 
song,  those  "  wanderings  of  thought "  which  Sophocles  has 

1  Work  quoted,  pp.  31,42,  68,  180  f.  184,  i86,  252.  The  evidence  collected 
in  this  interesting  book  is  so  varied,  so  extensive,  and  so  impartially  set  forth, 
that  the  conclusions  drawn  by  Wallaschek  ought  to  be  convincing. 

2  Gustaf  von  Diiben,  Otn  Lappland  ocli  Lapparne,  .  ,  .  Stockholm,  1873 
(colophon),  p.  319. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   93 

noted ;  and  the  curve  of  evolution  in  the  artist's  course  can 
show  how  rapidly  and  how  far  this  progress  has  been  made. 
But  the  relation  must  not  be  reversed ;  and  if  any  fact  seems 
established  for  primitive  life,  it  is  the  precedence  of  choral 
song  and  dance.  An  entertainer  and  an  audience,  an  artist 
and  a  public,  take  for  granted  preceding  social  conditions ; 
and  it  is  generally  admitted  that  social  conditions  begin  with 
the  festal  dance  as  well  as  with  communal  labour.  Indeed, 
as  Professor  Grosse  points  out,  rhythm  was  the  chief  factor 
in  social  "unification";  but  this  was  never  the  rhythm  of 
Norden's  rhythmical  prose,  or  the  irregular  measures  of  a 
recitative.  Where  and  when  the  individual  recitative  became 
a  thing  of  prominence,  as  it  undoubtedly  did,  is  a  matter  to 
be  studied  in  the  individual  and  centrifugal  impulse,  in  the 
progress  of  the  poet ;  here  it  is  enough  to  show  that  rhyth- 
mic verse  came  directly  from  the  choral  song,  and  that  neither 
the  choral  song,  nor  any  regular  song,  could  have  come  from 
the  recitative.  The  latter,  as  Jacobsthal  assures  us,  will  not 
go  with  dancing ;  and  earliest  singing,  as  is  still  the  case  in 
Africa,^  must  not  be  sundered  from  the  dance.  Baker,^  who 
made  a  careful  study  of  music  among  our  Indians,  sums  up 
the  matter  by  saying  that  "  the  characteristic  feature  of  primi- 
tive song  was  the  collectiveness  of  amusement,"  and  that 
"  recitatives  have  a  flow  of  words  and  a  clearness  of  expres- 
sion which  are  both  incompatible  with  primitive  song."  They 
need,  that  is,  a  developed  stage  of  speech  when  the  logical 
sentence  has  shaken  itself  free,  to  some  extent,  of  mere  emo- 
tional cadence  and  of  almost  meaningless  repetitions.  Here, 
indeed,  begin  the  orator,  the  teller  of  tales,  the  artistic  poet ; 
but  dance,  song,  and  poetry  itself  begin  with  a  communal 
consent,  which  is  expressed  by  the  most  exact  rhythm.  Emo- 
tional speech  is  an  ambiguous  phrase.     In  one  sense  it  is  an 

1  As  impossible,  says  one  authority,  quoted  by  Wallaschek,  Primitive  Music, 
p.  187,  "as  to  separate  the  colour  from  the  skin."  ^  Ibid.,  p.  186. 


94  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

individual,  broken,  irregularly  regular  sequence  of  phrases 
and  words ;  oratory  and  oratorical  cadences  came  out  of  such 
a  chaos,  but  never  the  ordered  rhythm  of  dancing  throngs. 
The  emotional  speech  in  which  exact  rhythm  began  was  the 
loud  and  repeated  crying  of  a  throng,  regulated  and  brought 
into  consent  by  movements  of  the  body,  and  getting  signifi- 
cance from  the  significance  of  the  festal  occasion.^ 

Evidence  is  everywhere  for  the  asking  in  this  matter 
of  communal  consent  and  choral  rhythm ;  but  instead  of 
taking  detached  and  random  facts  from  many  different 
sources,  it  will  be  well  to  select  three  groups  of  facts  which 
can  offer  in  each  case  compact  and  consistent  testimony. 
For  the  present  purpose  one  may  look  at  the  case  of  the 
Botocudos  of  South  America,  a  tribe  very  low  in  the  social 
scale,  as  studied  by  Dr.  Ehrenreich  ;  at  the  case  of  the  Eski- 
mos as  studied  by  Dr.  Boas ;  and  finally  at  the  case  of  Afri- 
can negroes  in  this  country,  studied  by  Colonel  Higginson 
thirty-five  years  ago,  under  most  favourable  circumstances, 
and  with  particular  reference  to  their  communal  singing. 
With  all  respect  for  the  zeal  and  truthfulness  of  missionaries, 
one  will  thus  do  well  to  leave  them  out  of  the  account,  and 
to  take  evidence  which  comes  in  two  cases  from  a  professed 
ethnologist  and  in  the  third  case  from  an  impartial  observer. 

1  It  is  the  neglect  of  choral  conditions  and  communal  consent  which  takes  away 
the  value  for  general  purposes  from  Dr.  Otto  Hoffman's  otherwise  praiseworthy 
study  of  the  Keimformeln  im  Westgermanischen  (Leipzig,  1886,  pp.  9  ff.).  Man, 
he  says,  naturally  speaks  in  breath-lengths,  in  periods  which  tend  to  be  of  equal 
duration.  "  Whoever  could  give  to  these  periods,  with  their  tendency  to  equal 
quantities,  the  most  symmetrical  and  equal  portions  of  actual  speech,  passed  for 
an  artist."  To  this  symmetry  in  duration  was  added  similarity  of  sound;  so  came 
the  short  riming  phrases,  as  well  as  the  verse-lengths  themselves.  But  poetry 
did  not  wait  until  clever  artists  furbished  up  into  verse-lengths  and  attractive  har- 
monies these  breath-lengths  of  a  spoken  sentence.  Language  itself,  as  one  will 
presently  see,  had  more  a  festal  than  an  individual  origin;  and  long  before  the 
artist  was  practising  his  breath-lengths  for  a  connected  story,  the  rhythm  of  verse 
was  fixed  by  the  muscular  rhythm  of  steps  in  a  communal  dance  accompanied  by 
words,  often  by  one  sound,  repeated  indefinitely,  but  in  exact  cadence  with  the  steps. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   95 

The  Botocudos  ^  are  little  better  than  a  leaderless  horde, 
and  pay  scant  heed  to  their  chieftain  ;  they  live  only  for 
their  immediate  bodily  needs,  and  take  small  thought  for  the 
morrow,  still  less  thought  for  the  past.  No  traditions,  no 
legends,  are  abroad  to  tell  them  of  their  forbears.  They 
still  use  gestures  to  express  feeling  and  ideas  ;  while  the 
number  of  words  which  imitate  a  given  sound  "  is  extraor- 
dinarily great."  An  action  or  an  object  is  named  by  imitating 
the  sound  peculiar  to  it ;  and  sounds  are  doubled  to  express 
greater  intensity  or  a  repetition.  To  speak  is  ad  ;  to  speak 
loudly,  or  to  sing,  is  ad-ad.  And  now  for  their  aesthetic 
life,  their  song,  dance,  poetry,  as  described  by  this  accurate 
observer.  "  On  festal  occasions  the  whole  horde  meets  by 
night  round  the  camp  fire  for  a  dance.  Men  and  women 
alternating  .  .  .  form  a  circle;  each  dancer  lays  his  arms 
about  the  necks  of  his  two  neighbours,  and  the  entire  ring 
begins  to  turn  to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  while  all  the  dancers 
stamp  strongly  and  in  rhythm  the  foot  that  is  advanced,  and 
drag  after  it  the  other  foot.  Now  with  drooping  heads  they 
press  closer  and  closer  together ;  now  they  widen  the  circle. 
Throughout  the  dance  resounds  a  monotonous  song  to  the 
time  of  which  they  stamp  their  feet.  Often  one  can  hear 
nothing  but  a  continually  repeated  kalatii  aha  !  .  .  .  again, 
however,  short  improvised  songs  in  which  are  told  the  doings 
of  the  day,  the  reasons  for  rejoicing,  what  not,  as  'Good 
hunting,'  or  '  Now  we  have  something  to  eat,'  or  '  Brandy 
is  good.' 2  Now  and  then,  too,  an  individual  begins  a  song, 
and  is  answered  by  the  rest  in  chorus.  ,  .  .    They  never  sing 

1  Dr.  Paul  Ehrenreich,  "  iiber  die  Botocuden,"  in  the  Zeitschr.  f.  Ethnologic, 
XIX.  30  ft". 

-  The  gnomic  verses  preserved  in  Anglo-Saxon,  especially  the  shorter  sentences 
in  the  Exeter  Ms.  (see  Grein-Wiilker,  Biblioth.,  I.  345  f.)  are  a  curious  instance 
of  the  survival  of  i7?<i7j'/-Botocudan  maxims  on  a  higher  plane  of  culture.  As  to 
the  aesthetic  value  of  the  South  American  utterance,  how  far  is  it  inferior  to  the 
sonorous  commonplaces  of  our  own  verse,  —  say  The  Psalm  of  Life  ? 


96  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

without  dancings  never  dance  without  singings  and  have  but 
one  zvord  to  express  both  song  and  danced 

As  the  unprejudiced  reader  sees,  this  clear  and  admirable 
account  confirms  the  doctrine  of  early  days,  revived  with 
fresh  ethnological  evidence  in  the  writings  of  Dr.  Brown 
and  of  Adam  Smith,  that  dance,  poetry,  and  song  were  once 
a  single  and  inseparable  function  ;  and  is  in  itself  fatal  to  the 
idea  of  rhythmic  prose,  of  solitary  recitation,  as  foundation 
of  poetry.  The  circle,  the  close  clasp,  the  rhythmic  consent 
of  steps  and  voices  ;  here  are  the  social  foundation  and  the 
communal  beginnings  of  the  art.  Then  comes  the  impro- 
vised song,  springing,  however,  from  these  communal  and 
choral  conditions,  and  still  referring  absolutely  to  present 
interests  of  the  horde  as  a  whole.  There  are  no  traditions, 
no  legends,  no  epic,  no  lyrics  of  love,  no  hymns  to  star  and 
sunset.  All  poetry  is  communal,  holding  fast  to  the  rhythm 
of  consent  as  to  the  one  sure  fact. 

The  Eskimo,^  despite  his  surroundings,  is  in  better  social 
case  than  the  Botocudo  ;  while  the  sense  of  kind  is  as  great, 
individual  growth  has  gone  further,  and  song  is  not  limited 
to  festal  and  communal  promptings.  The  "entertainer"  has 
arrived,  although,  when  he  begins  to  divert  his  little  audience 
in  the  snov/-hut,  he  must  always  turn  his  face  to  the  wall. 
Still  more,  there  is  no  monopoly ;  as  with  peasants  at  the 
Bavarian  dance,  where  each  must  and  can  sing  his  own 
improvised  quatrain,  so  here  each  member  of  the  party  has 
his  tale  to  tell,  his  song,  dance,  or  trick.  The  women  hum 
incessantly  while  at  work ;  but  the  words  are  mainly  that 
monotonous  air,  the  repeated  avma  aya  of  the  popular  chorus. 
Individuals  have  their  "own  "  tunes  and  songs,  which  easily 
become  traditional  ;  but  the  solitary  song  is  not  so  much  an 
Eskimo  characteristic  as  the  communal  song,  for   they  are 

'  "  The  Central  Eskimo,"  by  Dr.  F.  Boas,  Sixth  Annual  Report,  Bureau  of 
Ethnology,  1884-1885,  Washington,  1888,  pp.  409  ff. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY        97 

a  sociable  folk,  and  never  spend  their  evenings  alone.  They 
sing,  as  so  often  was  the  case  in  mediaeval  Europe,  while 
playing  ball ;  but  the  combination  of  choral  song  and  dance 
is  a  favourite  form,  and  both  singing  and  dancing  have  in 
this  case  one  name,  with  features  common  to  the  festivity 
all  over  the  world,  —  exact  rhythm,  repetition  of  word  and 
phrase,  endless  chorus,  a  fixed  refrain,  —  the  ainna  aya,  — 
short  and  intermittent  improvisation  by  solitary  singers  and 
reciters.  The  art  of  these  singers  and  reciters  is  in  an  ad- 
vanced stage  ;  for  they  perform  alone  as  well  as  under  sup- 
port of  the  chorus.  Three  phases  of  their  art  may  be 
mentioned.  First,  there  is  the  prose  tale  with  songs  or  reci- 
tatives interspersed,  a  sort  of  cante-fable.  Then  there  is  the 
tale  chanted  in  a  kind  of  recitative,  which  Dr.  Boas  calls 
poetic  prose.  Thirdly,  there  are  "  real  poems  of  a  very 
marked  rhythm,  which  are  not  sung  but  recited,"  and  the 
reciter  "jumps  up  and  down  and  to  right  and  left"  as  he 
speaks  his  piece.  That  is,  here  are  tales  which  have  come 
to  such  a  pitch  of  art  that  choral  and  refrain  and  repetition 
of  words  are  a  hindrance  to  the  flow  of  the  story.  Still,  even 
here  the  solitary  performances  stand  out  against  the  back- 
ground of  choral  singing  in  which  they  once  formed  such  a 
modest  part,  and  on  every  provocation  they  slip  into  it  again 
and  are  lost  in  the  old  rhythm  of  emotional  repetition  and 
communal  consent. 

The  negro  slaves  of  the  South,  finally,  with  their  traditional 
dance  and  song,  strangely  influenced  by  one  of  the  few  ele- 
ments of  civilization  which  really  came  into  their  life,  the 
religious  element,  offer  another  interesting  bit  of  evidence  to 
show  how  emotional  speech,  a  rude  poetry,  is  born  of  rhythm 
by  consent  of  a  throng.  In  those  so-called  "  spirituals  "  of 
the  negro  is  the  recitative  or  the  chorus  to  be  looked  upon 
as  original  }  Perhaps  Colonel  Higginson  had  as  good  a 
chance  to  study  this  communal  song  as  any  one  could  have ; 

H 


98  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

in  an  article^  written  soon  after  the  war  he  described  the 
singing  of  the  "  spirituals  "  by  men  of  his  regiment,  now  in 
camp,  now  on  the  march,  now  to  the  fall  of  the  oars.  He 
speaks  of  the  trait  so  prominent  in  all  primitive  song,  exact 
and  inevitable  rhythm,  however  harsh  the  voices  and  how- 
ever uncouth  the  words.  "  Often  ...  I  have  .  .  .  silently 
approached  some  glimmering  fire,  round  which  the  dusky 
figures  moved  in  the  rhythmical  barbaric  dance  the  negroes 
call  a  'shout,'  chanting,  often  harshly,  but  always  in  the 
most  perfect  time,  some  monotonous  refrain."  What  was  the 
favourite  of  all  these  spirituals,  "  sung  perhaps  twice  as  often 
as  any  other  "  .-'  A  song  called  Hold  Your  Light,  "  sung  with 
no  accompaniment  but  the  measured  clapping  of  hands  and 
the  clatter  of  many  feet ; "  it  "  properly  consisted  of  a  chorus 
alone  with  which  the  verses  of  other  songs  might  be  com- 
bined at  random." 

Hold  your  light,  Brudder  Robert,  — 

Hold  your  light. 
Hold  your  light  on  Canaan's  shore.  .  .  . 

For  Robert,  another  name  would  be  given,^  then  another,  and 
so  on  for  half  an  hour.  This  seemed  to  Colonel  Higginson 
"the  simplest  primitive  type  of  '  spiritual.'  "     Next  in  favour 

^^^  ■  Jordan  River,  Fm  bound  to  go, 

Bound  to  go,  bound  to  go, 
Jordan  River,  Fm  bound  to  go, 
And  bid  'em  fare  ye  well, 

then  with  Brudder  Robert,  Sister  Lucy,  and  so  on,  the  well- 
known  cumulative  refrain.  Now  if  one  had  only  the  text  of 
many  of  these  songs,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  singing  and 
dancing,  one  would  call  them  rhythmical  prose,  recitative ; 
for  example,  a  part  of  T/ie  Coming  Day.  One  is  told,  how- 
ever, that  this  "  was  a  boat-song  and  timed  well  with  the  tug 

1  Atlantic  Monthly,  XIX.  (1867),  685  ff. 

2  See  below,  on  Cumulative  Songs. 


RHYTHM  AS  THE  ESSENTIAL  FACT  OF  POETRY   99 

of  the  oar."  The  fact  is  that  here,  as  in  savage  and  pre- 
sumably in  primitive  song,  movement  of  body  and  rhythm  of 
voice  are  the  main  consideration,  while  the  words,  on  which 
civilized  man  imposes  individual  and  syntactic  correctness, 
are  of  very  subordinate  value.  Syllables  may  be  dropped  or 
added  at  will,  but  the  rhythm  must  be  exact ;  and  the  sim- 
plest way  to  avoid  verbal  distress  is  the  primitive  device  of 
repetition.^  When  the  words,  and  the  thought  in  them, 
begin  to  be  of  overmastering  importance  in  poetry,  "scan- 
ning "  acts  as  deputy  of  exact  rhythm  and  song,  until  at  last 
declamation  pushes  scanning  aside,  and  rhythm  is  reduced 
to  the  same  ancillary  function  once  assigned  to  thought  and 
words. 

Here,  then,  are  the  vital  elements  in  the  discussion. 
Rhythm  is  an  affair  of  instinctive  perception  transformed 
into  a  social  act  as  the  expression  of  social  consent.  It  has 
been  said  that  beginnings  and  not  origins  are  the  object  of 
our  quest ;  how  rhythm  in  poetry  may  stand  to  rhythm  in 
nature,  to  the  breath  or  the  pulse  of  man,  to  periodic  move- 
ments of  tide,  of  star,  and  so  in  vaster  and  vaster  cosmic 
relation,  or,  again,  to  infinitesimal  rhythms  in  the  cell,  in  the 
cell  of  the  cell,  —  are  queries  apart  from  the  present  pur- 
pose. Important,  however,  is  the  doctrine  held  by  modern 
scholars  that  poetic  rhythm  is  objectively  an  outcome  of  human 
activity,  and  subjectively  a  process  of  human  perception.^ 
Perhaps  the  best  short  study  of  the  wider  question  has  been 
made  by  Wallaschek.^     Insisting  that  "  rhythm  is  the  form 

^  .See  the  marching  song,  p.  690,  Go  in  the  Wilderness.  Thanks  to  the 
repetitions,  it  "scans"  correctly  enough,  even  when  it  is  read. 

-  Meumann's  remarks  on  this  subject  are  good,  though  they  apply  no  further 
than  the  narrow  circle  of  his  experiments.  See  Untersuchungen,  pp.  26,  35,  77. 
Grant  Allen,  Physiological  Esthetics,  London,  1887,  pp.  114  f.,  118,  is  quite  wide 
of  the  mark;  facts  of  physiology,  in  this  case,  need  very  careful  testing  by  the 
facts  of  poetry. 

'^  Mind,  N.  S.,  IV.  (1895),  28  ff.,  "On  the  Difference  of  Time  and  Rhythm 
in  Music,"  supplementing  researches  in  his  Primitive  Music. 


100  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

of  the  objective  movement,  time-sense  {jnesure,  takt)  the  form 
of  the  perceiving  subject-mind,"  noting  that  "  the  evenness  of 
time-groups  in  music  arises  from  the  original  organic  union 
of  dance  and  music,"  he  goes  on  to  point  out  a  fact  which 
seems  to  be  fundamental  for  any  study  of  beginnings  in 
poetry  as  well  as  in  the  sister  art,  although  it  is  music  of 
which  he  speaks.  Vocal  utterance  merely  as  result  of  "  cor- 
poral stimulus,"  song  like  that  of  birds,  is  not  yet  music,  — 
nor,  one  may  add,  is  the  cry  of  the  solitary  infant,  individual 
or  racial,  to  be  counted  as  poetry.  "  The  pecuUar  germ  which 
has  alone  been  found  capable  of  the  enormous  development 
actually  accomplished  in  music"  —  and  in  poetry — "  is  the 
chontSy  with  its  framework,  the  dance."  A  bird's  song  or  a 
man's  cry  is  merely  vent  for  emotion ;  but  when  several  per- 
sons sing  together,  there  is  more  than  emotion,  there  is  con- 
sent, and  consent  means  that  they  must  observe,  group,  and 
order  the  tones.  "They  could  not  keep  together  if  they  did 
not  mark  periods  .  .  .  for  there  is  no  concert  possible  with- 
out bars.  What  they  perform  is  rhythm,  what  they  think  is 
takt,  and  what  they  feel  is  surplus  of  vigour."  There  may  be 
some  error  in  the  details  of  this  analysis.  Wallaschek  has  not 
done  justice  to  the  "genesis  of  emotion,"  as  Ribot  ^  calls  it, 
through  unaided  rhythm  ;  he  may  not  concede  enough  to  the 
song  of  birds,  and  may  be  wrong  in  saying  that  no  one  ever 
heard  animals  sing  in  concert ;  ^  hysteric  cries,  which  tend 
to  be  rhythmic  and  show  a  maximum  of  emotion  with  a 
minimum  of  purpose,  have  doubtless  more  to  say  in  early 
rhythm  —  one  thinks  of  the  songs  of  lament,  the  vocej'i —  than 
he  admits ;  ^  but  his  main  point  about  choral  beginnings  is  of 

^  Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  p.  104. 

2  See  his  Primitive  Music,  pp.  239,  236,  note;   and  Crosse,  Anfdnge,  p.  213. 

^  The  theory  of  breath-lengths,  often  noted,  comes  here  into  play.  Under  high 
excitement  breathing  grows  abnormally  loud,  and  the  recurring  pauses  are  regular. 
Play-excitement,  festal  shouting  and  leaping,  would  of  course  bring  this  about; 
Ijut  the  individual  must  be  studied.     Strongly  accented  verses  result  from  such  a 


RHYTHM    AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      lOI 

immense  importance.  Poetry,  like  music,  is  social ;  like  its 
main  factor,  rhythm,  it  is  the  outcome  of  communal  consent, 
a  faculty  d' ensemble ;  and  this  should  be  writ  large  over 
every  treatise  on  poetry,  in  order  to  draw  the  mind  of  the 
reader  from  that  warped  and  baffling  habit  which  looks  upon 
all  poetry  as  a  solitary  performance.  The  modern  reader 
is  passive ;  even  hearing  poetry  is  mainly  foreign  to  him  ; 
active  poetry,  such  as  abounded  in  primitive  life,  is  to  him  the 
vagary  of  a  football  mob,  the  pleasure  of  school  children  ;  and 
to  such  a  reader  the  words  of  Wallaschek  are  salutary  indeed, 
insisting  that  not  the  sense  of  hearing  alone  is  to  be  studied 
when  one  takes  up  the  psychology  of  music,  but  the  mus- 
cular sense  as  well,  and  that  the  muscular  sense  has  pre- 
cedence. " '  Making  music '  means  in  the  primitive  world 
performing,  not  listening,"  a  statement  which  applies  as  well 
to  poetry.  And  what  sort  of  rhythm,  under  leave  of  Norden 
and  the  rest,  is  one  to  assume  for  the  primitive  consent 
whether  in  music  or  in  poetry  .■'  Well,  earliest  music  shows 
"an  unsettled  melody,  an  uncertain  and  constantly  varying 
intonation,  a  perpetual  fluctuation  of  pitch,"  but,  contrasted 
with  all  this,  "  the  strict  and  ever  prevailing  rhythm,"  "  the 
precision  and  marvellously  exact  performance  of  numberless 
performers."  ^     For  two  facts,  then,  of  great  moment  in  the 

process,  as  any  one  can  see  who  undertakes  to  recite  poetry  during  violent  but 
regular  exercise,  —  say,  in  swinging  Indian  clubs.  Here,  too,  one  learns  how 
rhythm  preceded  pitch  and  quantity;  the  jerked-out  accents  leave  little  room  for 
measuring  either  height  or  length  of  tones.  But  the  throng  and  its  consent 
brought  out  this  rhythm,  not  oratory;  and  one  must  keep  in  mind  the  remark  of 
Hamann,  after  his  famous  phrase  about  poetry  as  the  mother-tongue  of  man, 
"  vvie  Gesang  alter  als  Declamation." 

1  The  ethnological  evidence  for  this  statement  is  given  in  Wallaschek's  Primi- 
tive Music  on  nearly  every  page.  Many  good  things  on  the  origin  of  rhythm 
could  be  quoted  from  older  writers.  A.  W.  Schlegel  undertook  a  physiological 
and  genetic  study  of  rhythm,  but,  at  Schiller's  prompting,  offered  more  attractive 
metal  to  the  Kantlings  with  "  das  Beharrliche  im  Wechsel."  One  notes,  how- 
ever, the  modern  tone  of  passages  in  the  Berlin  Lectures;  e.g.  I.  242  ff.  Now 
and  then  he  almost  anticipates  Bucher's  Arbeit  und  Rhythmus.     Sulzer's  article 


I02  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

study  of  poetry,  there  is  universal  testimony  from  savage 
tribes  all  over  the  earth.  Singing  is  mainly  choral  and  timed 
to  the  dance  ;  and  the  rhythm,  no  matter  how  large  the  throng, 
is  amazingly  correct. 

So  much  for  the  savages.  Arguments  from  the  study  of 
children,  as  was  said  in  foregoing  remarks  on  method,  should 
be  applied  with  great  caution  to  the  history  of  literary  forms. 
It  may  be  noted,  however,  that  nothing  brought  out  thus  far  by 
such  studies  has  worked  against  the  assumption  of  extremely 
accurate  rhythm  as  the  fundamental  fact  in  primitive  poetry. 
Of  course,  one  must  not  set  a  child  to  tasks  that  belong  in  mature 
stages  of  poetry.  The  early  efforts  of  children  to  make  a 
metrical  composition  ^  are  generally  rough  and  only  approxi- 
mately rhythmic.  Repeat  a  few  verses,  and  ask  the  child  to 
make  verses  like  them,  giving  him  paper,  pencil,  solitude, 
encouragement,  and  the  promise  of  cake,  all  the  known  aids 
by  which  an  adult  poet  wins  his  peerage  or  the  abbey ;  the 
child  will  probably  hit  a  rime  or  so,  more  or  less  accurate, 
but  the  verse  will  halt.  This,  however,  is  easily  explained. 
Solitary  composition,  the  process  of  following  a  set  form  of 
sounds  by  making  sentences  of  his  own  to  fit  the  scheme, 
the  combination  of  thought  with  rhythm,  is  a  task  beyond 
his  powers,  and  for  an  excellent  reason ;  it  was  also  beyond 
the  powers  of  primitive  man.  But  let  the  same  child,  with  a 
dozen  other  children,  in  an  extemporized  game,  fall  to  crying 
out  some  simple  phrase  in  choral  repetition ;  the  rhythm  is 
almost  painful  in  its  exactness.  Repeat  to  this  child  rimes 
of  the  nursery ;  he  is  sworn  foe  to  defective  metre,  and 
boggles  at  it ;  indeed,  such  defects  are  hard  to  find  in  all  the 
amiable  nonsense.     The  child's  ear  for  rhythm  is  acute ;  his 

in  the  Allgemeine  Theorie  is  very  interesting.  For  early  material,  see  Blanken- 
burg's  invaluable  Litlerarische  Zusatze,  3  vols.,  1 796-1 798,  A  good  recent  dis- 
cussion is  found  in  the  third  book  of  Guyau's  Problhnes. 

1  Unless  it  is  a  succession  of  inarticulate  sounds.  See  Groos,  Spiele  der 
Menschen,  Jena,  1899,  p.  42. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      103 

execution  of  it  in  choral,  or  in  verse  learned  from  the  hear- 
ing, is  precise ;  his  demands  upon  it  are  of  the  strictest ;  but 
in  solitary  composition,  a  mental  effort,  he  loses  his  rhythmic 
way,  and  grows  bewildered  in  those  new  paths  of  thought. 
A  teacher  of  considerable  experience  recently  made  the  state- 
ment that  children  in  school  will  turn  loose  or  defective  metre, 
once  the  idea  of  rhythm  is  given  them,  into  accurately  measured 
verse.  Indeed,  it  is  probable  that  the  halting  verses  of  an 
indifferent  poet,  such  as  one  finds  in  newspapers,  begin  in 
the  maker's  constructive  process  as  correct  rhythm,  but  lose 
this  cadence  in  the  course  of  composition.^  Be  that  as  it 
may  be,  however,  the  rhythmical  sense  of  children  is  remark- 
ably exact  for  purposes  of  choral  singing  and  recital. 

It  is  evident  that  one  is  not  likely  to  be  embarrassed  by  a 
lack  of  rhythm  in  early  poetry,  but  rather  by  a  lack  of  any- 
thing else.  There  is  the  danger,  when  one  has  made  so 
much  of  rhythm,  that  this  early  art  will  be  called  nothing 
more  than  vocal  music,  and  will  vainly  claim  the  title  of 
poetry.  Here  are  dance  and  music,  one  is  told,  and  that  is 
all.  Wagner  2  believed  in  the  original  union  of  the  three 
arts ;  but  Wallaschek  ^  separates  poetry  from  music  and 
dance.       Unfortunately,    he    does    not    say   what    primitive 

1  Compare  the  "  meaningless  "  words  so  common  in  savage  poetry.  The  art 
of  combining  with  exact  rhythm  a  series  of  syntactic  sentences  which  give  a 
connected  story,  or  express  a  logical  series  of  thoughts,  is  no  primitive  process. 
Earliest  poetry  is  repetition  of  sounds,  —  not  meaningless,  for  they  were  connected 
with  the  occasion,  — of  words,  of  sentences,  with  a  diminishing  use  of  the  refrain, 
a  diminishing  frequency  of  repetition. 

2  In  his  "Art  of  the  Future,"  Gesammelte  Schriften,  III.  82  ff.,  he  tells  how 
dance,  song,  and  poem  were  at  first  inseparable.  Dance  has  as  artistic  material 
"the  whole  man  from  top  to  toe";  but  it  becomes  an  art  only  through  rhythm, 
which  is  also  the  very  skeleton  of  music:  "without  rhythm  no  dance,  no  song." 
Rhythm  is  "  the  soul  of  dancing  and  the  brain  of  music."  With  the  human 
voice  comes  poetry,  all  three  being  woven  in  one :  out  of  this  union  of  the  three 
"is  born  the  single  art  of  lyric,"  but  they  get  their  highest  expression  in  the 
drama. 

^  Primitive  Music,  pp.  174,  187. 


104 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 


poetry  could  have  been ;  recitative  he  rejects  utterly ;  it  is 
clear,  however,  that  he  is  thinking  of  a  poetry  which  no  one 
is  disposed  to  father  upon  earliest  man,  that  poetry  of  thought 
and  syntactic  statement  familiar  to  later  days.  Poetry,  he 
says,  always  depends  upon  the  intellect.  Far  better,  because 
clearer  and  in  closer  accord  with  ethnological  facts,  are  the 
brief  statement  of  Ribot  and  the  elaborate  theory  of  Dono- 
van. Ribot,^  considering  as  a  matter  of  fact  how  spontane- 
ous movements  pass  into  creative  and  aesthetic  activity,  finds 
by  all  evidence  at  hand  that  dancing  in  pantomime  was  the 
"  primordial "  and  universal  art,  and  that  it  was  composite, 
"  including  the  rudimentary  form  of  two  acts  destined  later 
on  to  separate  in  the  course  of  their  evolution,  —  music  and 
poetry.  Poor  music,,  indeed,  .  .  .  but  remarkable  for  the 
strictness  of  rhythm  and  measure,  and  poor  poetry,  consisting 
in  a  short  sentence  incessantly  repeated,  or  even  in  mono- 
syllables without  precise  signification."  That  is  a  clear 
statement ;  but  it  takes  for  granted,  in  some  measure,  what 
Donovan  tries  to  prove,  —  the  festal  origin  of  speech.^ 
Whether  Donovan  does  prove  this  or  not,  he  makes  it 
perfectly  clear  that  the  vocal  music,  which  Wallaschek 
separated  from  poetry  without  giving  an  idea  what  poetry 
was  and  how  it  began,  was  itself  poetry,  and  had  functions 
which  expressed  the  human  emotions  of  that  time  as  well 
as  the  most  finished  poem  expresses  modern  emotion  and 
thought.  With  the  philological  arguments  we  are  not  con- 
cerned, and,  indeed,  theories  about  the  origin  of  language 
have  always  been  kittle  cattle  to  shoe ;  we  are  concerned, 
however,  with  these  four  elements  of  a  primitive  festal 
gathering :  bodily  play-movements,  rhythmical  beating,  some 
approach  to  song,  and  some  degree  of   communal  interest. 

1  Psychology  of  the  Emotions^  pp.  335  f. 

2  In    an    article  so   entitled,   in  Mind,   XVI.   (1891),  498  ff.,  and  N.  S.,  I. 
(1892),  325  ff. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      105 

Of  these,  the  first  and  the  fourth  are  fused  in  dancing,  which 
begins  as  a  celebration  of  victory,  and  is  found  later  in  the 
harvesting  of  a  crop  and  in  the  vintage.  "Communal  elation 
following  success  in  a  common  enterprise  "  is  the  earhest 
occasion  for  social  consent  of  the  festal  type ;  and  it  finds 
expression  in .  imitating  that  successful  act,  along  with 
"rhythmic  beating," ^  and  with  excited  individual  cries 
which  are  brought  into  rhythm  with  the  steps,  the  gestures 
and  the  "beating"  itself.  Hence  speech  and  song.  In  his 
second  article,  Donovan  tries  to  trace  the  process  by  which 
meaning  got  into  these  cries,  and  how  they  led  to  gram- 
matical forms  of  speech ;  what  interests  us  here  is  the 
exactness,  the  prevalence,  the  dominant  force  of  rhythm  as 
foundation  of  consent,  and  so  of  social  act,  dance,  song,  word. 
As  with  savages  now,  so  with  primitive  man,  however  wild 
and  confused  the  social  mass  may  be,  rhythm  is  at  the  heart 
of  their  social  life.  Here  is  the  point  of  order  in  the  chaos ; 
and  one  may  safely  assume  that  such  order  and  precision  of 
mere  sounds  would  be  the  obvious  stay  for  all  efforts  to  give 
them  meaning  and  connection.  Language,  after  all,  is  com- 
munication. This  is  probably  what  Donovan  means  when 
he  makes  rhythm  the  prime  social  factor,  the  bridge  from 
merely  animal  to  human ;  rhythmic  forms,  he  says,  are 
"  witnesses  of  a  lower  stage  of  progress  than  any  yet  known 

1  The  tendency  to  use  hands  as  well  as  feet  in  keeping  rhythm  is  illustrated 
by  the  Ba-Ronga  of  Delagoa  Bay  (Junod,  Les  Chantes  et  les  Contes  des  Ba-Ronga, 
Lausanne,  1897),  where  the  use  of  sticks  may  help  to  explain  Donovan's 
"  rhythmic  beating."  With  these  people  "  tout  s'y  chante  et  .  .  .  tous  ou  pres- 
que  tous  les  chants  s'y  dansent "  (p.  21).  Refrains  are  sung  "ten,  twenty,  fifty 
times  in  succession";  the  songs  have  two  elements,  the  solo  and  the  refrain  en 
tntti.  A  circle  is  formed,  the  men  holding  sticks  in  their  hands;  the  solo  singer 
leaps  into  the  middle  and  sings  a  few  words;  then  all  the  dancers  sing  a  refrain, 
raising  and  dropping  their  sticks  in  cadence,  though  the  rhythm  is  primarily  given 
by  their  stamping  feet.  Then  the  soloist  again,  only  slightly  varying  his  theme; 
and  again  the  long  refrain  (pp.  32  f.).  The  war-songs  are  almost  entirely  refrain, 
sung  by  all  the  warriors  as  they  dance,  "  antique  et  grandiose  choral,"  says  Junod. 


I06  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

to  anthropological  records,"  —  the  "stage  of  the  passage 
between  brute  and  man";  and  he  gives  modern  philology 
food  for  thought  when  he  declares  that  many  facts  and 
considerations  "  run  counter  to  the  notion  that  song,  or 
rhythmical  and  poetical  forms,  must  be  supervening  embel- 
lishments of  speech  which  imply  a  certain  height  of  civiliza- 
tion." A  chapter  in  his  earlier  book  ^  goes  more  into  the 
details  of  communal  poetry  under  primitive  conditions,  and 
answers  objections  which  might  be  made  to  this  poetical 
function  of  the  throng.  A  happily  chosen  verse  from 
Horace  enforces  the  deprecation  of  that  habit  which  now 
makes  a  poet's  muse  the  poet  himself  or  else  an  amiable 
fiction.  The  earliest  "  muse  "  was  simply  that  "music"  or 
rhythm  of  the  throng  which  held  up  the  singer's  tottering 
personality  in  his  first  steps  over  the  burning  marie  of  indi- 
vidual expression  before  the  throng  itself  —  still  a  nervous 
matter !  —  and  prompted  or  sustained  his  improvisations ; 
for  primitive  man  this  muse  was  the  cadence  of  falling 
feet,  rhythmic  cries,  social  consent.  And  how  came  those 
"  higher  artistic  interests  connected  with  speech  out  of  the 
pantomimic  and  choral  dance  .'' "  Direct  evidence,  Donovan 
remarks,  is  meagre ;  but  of  indirect  evidence  there  is  a 
"  mighty  mass."  Hindu  words  for  the  drama  go  back  to 
the  word  which  means  to  dance.  Hellenic  drama  has  an 
even  more  definite  development  of  the  same  sort.  European 
lyric  poetry  grew  out  of  the  choral  dance;  and  folksongs 
which  sprang  directly  from  "  the  spontaneous  elation  of  the 
crowd,"  though  rare,  still  occur  even  now  in  Greece,  Italy, 
Russia,  Hungary .2  Accentual  verse  is  "the  natural  inheri- 
tance of  poetry  which  grew  from  the  fusion  of  rhythms  and 

^  From  Lyre  to  Muse,  a  History  of  the  Aboriginal  Union  of  Music  and  Poetry, 
London,  1890;   Chap.  V.,  "  Fusion  of  Tones  and  Words." 

2  "  It  is  said  that  if  it  is  known  that  anybody  in  particular  composed  a  song, 
the  people  in  some  of  these  places  will  not  sing  it,"  Ibid.,  pp.  138  f.  For  this 
vexed  question,  see  below,  chapter  on  Communal  Poetry. 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      10/ 

tones  and  words.  The  words  uttered  by  a  rude  people  spon- 
taneously, and  during  the  elation  produced  through  following 
the  movements  of  the  dance  and  listening  to  the  accompany- 
ing tones,  were  obliged  to  assume  the  natural  impulsive  ele- 
ment of  rhythm."  Horace,  in  a  familiar  passage,  tells  how 
the  artist  began  his  work  with  this  choral  and  communal 
material  ^  now  unknown  except  in  survivals  like  the  refrain 
of  harvest  songs  :  — 

per  audaces  nova  dithyrambos 
verba  devolvit, 

new  words,  that  is,  instead  of  the  old  choral  repetitions. 
That  these  communal  songs,  however,  were  poetry  in  them- 
selves seems  sufficiently  proved.  The  objection  urged  by 
Wallaschek,  that  rhythmic  sounds  were  inadequate  to  the 
demands  of  poetry,  falls  flat  for  the  negative  reason  that 
nowhere  else  can  poetry  be  found  under  primitive  conditions, 
and  for  the  positive  reason  that  these  rhythmic  sounds  were 
unquestionably  full  of  communal  significance  and  may  well 
have  served  as  the  raw  material  of  speech  itself. 

So  far  the  theory  of  social  consent  as  the  basis  of  rhythm 
and  the  foundation  of  poetry  has  been  supported  mainly  by 
the  dance.  This  play-theory,  this  festal  origin,  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  probable ;  but  it  must  leave  room  and  verge  enough 
for  the  part  played  by  labour.  Human  society  was  organized 
in  the  spirit  of  a  grim  struggle  for  life ;  and  human  labour 
under  social  conditions  is  a  main  part  of  the  struggle.  Pro- 
fessor Karl  BiJcher's  essay  on  Labour  and  Rhythm^  is  meant 

^  Of  course  Horace  (IV.  ii.  lo  ff .)  is  thinking  of  Pindar's  "  new  "  compounds 
and  fresh  expressions ;  but  the  quotation  agrees  as  well  with  the  history  of  the 
dithyrambic  poem. 

2  "  Arbeit  und  Rhythmus,"  reprinted  from  the  Abhandlungen  d.  kgl.  sdchsischen 
Geselhchaft  d.  Wissenschaften,  philol.  histor.  Classe,  XVII.  5,  Leipzig,  1896. 
According  to  Groos,  Spiele  der  Mensche7i,  pp.  57  ff.,  some  of  these  statements 
have  been  modified.  In  the  second  edition  of  the  Entstehung  der  Volkswirthschaft, 
pp.  32  f.,  a  book  which  the  present  writer  could  not  consult,  Biicher  concedes  the 


I08  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

in  part  as  a  sociological  study  of  the  beginnings  of  poetry ;  it 
has  been  greeted  everywhere  as  an  important  contribution  to 
our  positive  knowledge  of  the  case ;  and  a  summary  of  it  is 
unavoidable  for  the  matter  now  in  hand.^  His  argument  is 
clear.  Fatigue,  which  besets  all  work  felt  as  work  by  reason 
of  its  continued  application  of  purpose,  vanished  for  primi- 
tive man  as  it  vanishes  now  for  children,  if  the  work  was  once 
freed  from  this  stress  of  application  and  so  turned  to  a  kind 
of  play.  The  dance  itself  is  really  hard  work,  exacting  and 
violent ;  what  makes  it  the  favourite  it  is  with  savages  as  with 
children .''  Simply  its  automatic,  regular,  rhythmic  character, 
the  due  repetition  of  a  familiar  movement  which  allows  the 
mind  to  relax  its  attitude  of  constant  purpose.  The  purpose 
and  plan  of  work  involve  external  sources  and  external  ends ; 
rhythm  is  instinctive,  and  springs  from  the  organic  nature  of 
man ;  it  is  no  invention.^  The  song  that  one  sings  while  at 
work  is  not  something  fitted  to  the  work,  but  comes  from 
movements  of  the  body  in  the  specific  acts  of  labour ;  and 
this  applies  not  only  to  the  rhythm,  but  even  to  the  words.^ 
So  it  was  in  the  festal  dance.  That  primitive  man  was  less 
impeded  in  bodily  movements  than  is  now  the  case,  and  that 
these  movements  were  more  marked  ;  that  the  rigorously 
exact  movement  begat  a  rigorously  exact  rhythm,  to  which  at 
first  half  meaningless  sounds  and  then  words  were  joined, 
often  lingering  in  later  days  as  a  refrain  of  field  or  spinning- 
room  —  witness  the  pantomimic  action  which  goes  with  the 
Vv^ords  of  that  New  Zealand  planting-song,  and  a  host  of  sim- 

priority  of  play,  and  sees  in  it  the  starting-point  of  labour.  This,  however,  does 
not  change  the  validity  of  Biicher's  main  argument  for  the  connection  of  labour 
and  rhythm,  so  far  as  they  concern  the  beginnings  of  poetry. 

1  A.  W.  Schlegel  here  and  there  hints  at  this  origin  of  rhythm  in  labour;  so 
does  Sulzer.  See  note  above,  p.  loi.  See  also  the  Abbe  Batteux,  "  Sur  les 
Nombres  Poetiques  et  Oratoires,"  Man.  Acad.  Inscrifit.,  XXXV.  415:  "le  mar- 
teau  du  forgeron  tombe  en  cadence,  la  faulx  du  moissonneur  va  et  revient  avec 
nombre  .  .  .  le  rhythme  soutient  nos  forces  dans  les  travaux  penibles." 

2  P.ucher,  p.  lOl.  *  Il)id.,  p.  52. 


RHYTHM    AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      109 

ilar  survivals ;  that  poetry  and  music  were  always  combined 
by  early  man,  and,  along  with  labour,  made  up  the  primitive 
three-in-one,  an  organic  whole,  labour  being  the  basal  fact, 
with  rhythm  as  element  common  to  the  three ;  ^  and  that  not 
harmony  or  pitch,  but  this  overmastering  and  pervasive 
rhythm,  exact,  definite,  was  the  main  factor  of  early  song, — 
these  are  conclusions  for  which  Biicher  offers  ample  and  con- 
vincing evidence.  In  particular  we  may  look,  first,  at  his  con- 
clusion against  unrhythmic  poetry,  then  at  his  theory  of 
rhythmic  origins,  and  finally  at  his  study  of  individual  and 
social  labour.  For  the  first,  he  remarks,  as  all  students  of  eth- 
nology have  remarked,  that  primitive  folk  care  little  for  mel- 
ody ;  the  main,  the  only  musical  element  in  their  songs  is 
rhythm.  Rhythm  is  not  bound  up  with  speech  as  speech, 
and  must  come  to  it  from  without ;  for  mere  observation  and 
development  of  the  rhythmical  tendencies  inherent  in  lan- 
guage could  not  have  led  to  the  fact  of  rhythm  as  known  to 
primitive  man.  The  main  external  source  of  rhythm,  then, 
is  the  habit  of  accompanying  bodily  movements  with  sounds 
of  the  voice,  and  these  bodily  movements  were  primarily 
movements  in  man's  work.  Taking  such  songs  of  labour  as 
still  remain,  Biicher  finds  that  the  more  primitive  these  are, 
the  closer  relation  they  have  with  the  labour  itself.  The 
rhythm,  too,  is  fixed  by  the  movement ;  words  change  at  will 
and  are  mostly  improvised.  Briefly,  Biicher  adds  one  more 
answer  to  that  old  question  about  the  origins  of  poetry,  and 
finds  them  chiefly  in  the  labour  of  primitive  man,  where  ener- 
getic and  continual  movements  of  an  instinctively  rhythmic 
nature  begat  "  not  only  the  form  but  the  material "  of  poetry. 
The  same  rhythmic  succession  of  rise  and  fall  is  common  to 

1  "  Grundelement  dieser  Dreieinheit,"  Ibid.,  p.  78.  Of  course,  he  admits  else- 
where similar  functions  of  the  dance,  which  was,  after  all,  a  kind  of  labour,  even 
when  not  an  imitation  of  labour.  Hence  Biicher  gives  priority  to  labour  in  its 
large  sense.  For  primitive  man  the  line  between  work  and  play  was  not  too 
sharply  drawn. 


no  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

labour  and  to  verse ;  and  as  for  the  words,  these  came  not 
from  bodily  exertion,  but  from  the  sounds  produced  by  the 
work  itself,  sounds  like  the  noise  of  the  feet  in  treading,  like 
the  blows  of  a  primitive  implement,  which  irresistibly  pro- 
voked accompaniment  by  the  voice.  That  these  sounds  had 
a  meaning  vague  at  first,  then  sharper,  clearer,  and  connected 
with  the  cause,  conditions,  and  purpose  of  the  work,  is  lawful 
inference.  Words  that  so  took  their  places  in  the  regular  and 
inexorable  rhythm  of  work  or  dance  must  share  in  that  regu- 
larity ;  recitative,  or  the  rhythm  of  easy  prose,  has  no  place 
under  such  conditions,  and  Biicher  rejects  it  utterly.  Again, 
all  human  work  began  with  movements  of  arms  and  legs 
"  which  instinctively  move  in  rhythm."  With  Biicher's  fur- 
ther development  of  this  theory,  that  beating  and  stamping, 
earliest  forms  of  work,  plus  the  human  voice  which  followed 
the  rise  and  fall  of  the  labour,  are  the  basis  of  metrical  "feet  "  ; 
that  iamb  and  trochee  are  stamping  measures,  spondee  a 
measure  of  striking  or  beating,  still  easy  to  note  where  two 
hands  strike  in  rhythm  ;  that  dactyl  and  anapaest  can  be  heard 
at  the  forge  of  any  blacksmith  whose  main  blow  on  the  iron 
is  either  followed  or  preceded  by  two  shorter,  lighter  blows, — 
with  these  attractive  but  minor  considerations  one  may  agree 
or  disagree,  but  the  vital  fact  of  rhythm  as  the  pulse  of  earli- 
est human  labour  and  play,  of  earliest  poetry,  of  earliest 
music,  is  vastly  strengthened  by  the  evidence  and  the  argu- 
ments set  forth  in  this  admirable  essay. 

For  the  matter  of  individual  and  social  ^  labour,  Biicher  has 
inference  and  hints,  but  hardly  a  developed  theory.  It  is 
easy,  however,  to  infer  that  stress  is  to  be  laid  on  the  social 
rather  than  on  individual  conditions.     In  play  and  the  dance 

1  A  strong  support  for  this  social  foundation  of  song  is  found  in  observations 
such  as  Bockel  has  made  among  the  peasants  of  Hesse.  "  Their  song,"  he  says 
(work  quoted,  p.  cv.),  "  is  nearly  all  choral;  the  countryman,  when  sober,  seldom 
sings  alone.  It  is  remarkable,"  Bockel  goes  on  to  say,  "  how  these  people,  who 
singly  show  little  capacity  for  music,  can  make  such  an  artistic  effect  in  chorus." 


RHYTHM   AS  THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      in 

this  is  everywhere  conceded.  To  tread  the  winepress  alone, 
however  the  instinctively  and  unavoidably  rhythmic  move- 
ment might  provoke  one  to  song,  was  a  small  factor  in  rhyth- 
mic development  when  compared  with  the  consent  of  many 
feet  treading  in  joy  of  the  vintage.^  For  individual  labour, 
songs  of  women  grinding  at  the  mill,  once  a  most  wearisome 
task,  are  the  best  example  ;  and  hints  of  these,  even  scraps  of 
actual  song,  are  found  in  plenty.^  But  two  women  and  more 
were  often  to  be  found  grinding  together,  and  the  social  con- 
sent of  such  songs  must  have  been  at  least  as  frequent  as  the 
lonely  voice.  Biicher  points  out,  moreover,  how  the  solitary 
act  of  labour,  particularly  with  heavy  tools,  tends  to  be  uncer- 
tain and  unrhythmic,  and  how  the  addition  of  a  second  work- 
man, say  at  the  forge,  or  in  threshing  or  in  ramming  stones, 
at  once  induces  an  exact  rhythm,  the  rhythm  born  of  consent. 
This  is  a  primitive  process  and  most  important.  The  idea  of 
savages  as  capricious,  and  therefore  not  acting  in  concert,  is 
a  hasty  inference,  true  only  to  a  certain  point ;  for  it  is  civ- 
ilized folk  who  v;ork  independently,  and  it  is  the  uncivilized 
who  must  cling  to  rhythm  both  in  work  and  in  play,  since 
nowhere  else  are  men  found  so  dependent  on  concerted  auto- 
matic work  as  in  savage  life.  A  man  of  advanced  culture 
thinks  out  his  own  labour,  and  does  it  in  his  own  way ;  his 
concert  of  work  with  other  men  is  a  higher  synthesis  of  indi- 
vidual performances  which  is  unknown  to  the  savage.  All 
this  opens  to  our  eyes  the  spectacle  of  a  long  evolution,  at 
one  end  of  which,  the  uncertain,  tentative  beginnings  of 
social  life,  we  see  human  beings  acting,  alike  in  the  tasks 
and   in    the    pleasures    of   their   time,   with    a    minimum    of 

1  Several  men,  as  a  rule,  trod  the  grapes  with  naked  feet.  Songs  directly 
sprung  from  this  labour  survived  for  long  ages.  The  material  is  indicated  by 
Biicher,  pp.  88  f.  The  later  festal  songs,  of  course,  were  symbolical  and 
reminiscent. 

2  The  famous  Greek  song,  preserved  by  Plutarch,  is  matched  by  recent  songs 
of  the  Africans,  as  well  as  by  those  of  European  traditions. 


112  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

thought  and  a  maximum  of  rhythm ;  while  at  the  hither  end 
is  a  highly  developed  society,  where  the  monotonous  whir  of 
machinery  has  thrust  out  the  old  cadence  and  rhythm  of 
man's  labour,  where  strenuous  and  solitary  wanderings  re- 
place the  communal  dance,  and  where  every  brow  is  marked 
with  the  burden  of  incessant  thought. 

The  threads  of  evidence,  then,  all  end  in  one  point  close 
to  that  blackness  of  thick  darkness  which  veils  the  hfe  of 
earliest  man ;  at  this  point,  the  point  of  social  consent,  work 
is  not  far  from  play,  and  art  is  still  in  solution  with  practical 
life.  The  arts  of  movement,  of  music,  dance,  poetry,  are  in 
evidence  only  along  with  the  arts  of  subsistence  and  tribal 
life,  with  the  labour,  actual  or  reminiscent,  of  primitive  social 
conditions ;  while  the  arts  that  take  permanent  form,  such 
as  sculpture  and  painting,  appear  only  in  the  results  of  this 
labour  as  rude  forms  of  ornament.  What  holds  together 
these  heterogeneous  elements  is  rhythm,  "  the  ordered  group- 
ing of  movements,  as  they  occur  in  temporal  succession,"  so 
Biicher  defines  it;  and  it  is  rhythm  which  must  count,  by  his 
reckoning,  as  one  of  the  greatest  factors  in  social  develop- 
ment, a  function,  too,  not  out  of  date  even  under  existing 
conditions  of  life. 

So  much  by  way  of  proof,  and  it  seems  conclusive,  for 
rhythm  as  the  fundamental  fact  of  poetry.  True,  it  is  not 
the  fundamental  fact  for  modern  consideration,  which  goes 
below  the  surface  and  seeks  a  deeper  meaning,  asking  for 
the  nobly  imaginative  and  for  that  mingling  of  the  emotional 
and  the  intellectual  which  submits  "  the  shows  of  things  to 
the  desires  of  the  mind  "  ;  it  is  not  even  the  overwhelming 
element  in  modern  poetic  form.  Naked  limbs  no  longer 
move  unimpeded  in  the  dance,  no  longer  stand  out  free  and 
bold  as  they  tread  the  winepress  ;  naked  and  insistent  rhythm, 
too,  is,  for  the  most  part,  so  hidden  by  draperies  of  verbal  ex- 
pression, that  one  is  fain  to  call  it  no  essential  factor  in  a 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      113 

poetic  process.    Modern  art,  deliberate  and  intellectual,  turns 

in  scorn  upon  that  helpless  poetry  of  the  horde,  as  Prospero 

upon  Caliban  :  — 

I  pitied  thee, 
Took  pains  to  make  thee  speak,  taught  thee  each  hour 
One  thing  or  other :  when  thou  didst  not,  savage. 
Know  thine  own  meaning,  but  wouldst  gabble  like 
A  thing  most  brutish.  I  endow'd  thy  purposes 
With  words  that  made  them  known. 

Imperious  thought  is  ashamed  of  this  mere  regularity,  this 
recurrence,  this  common  gift ;  where  is  the  art  in  it  ?  Art, 
said  Schiller,,  must  have  something  in  its  work  that  is  volun- 
tary, fresh,  surprising ;  the  voice,  he  said,  may  be  beautiful, 
but  there  is  no  beauty  in  mere  breathing.  Has  not  poetry, 
then,  it  may  be  asked,  gained  in  meaning  for  mankind,  in 
nobility  and  dignity,  precisely  as  it  has  loosed  the  bands  of 
rhythm,  forsworn  this  ignoble  and  slavish  regularity,  receded 
from  the  throng,  spurned  the  chorus,  turned  to  solitary  places, 
and  cherished  the  individual,  the  artist,  the  poet .''  Granting 
the  throng,  the  dance,  the  rhythm,  the  shouts,  is  not  all  this 
but  poetry  in  the  nebular  state,  and  does  not  real  poetry 
begin  where  Aristotle  makes  it  begin,  when  an  individual 
singer  detaches  himself  from  the  choral  mass,  improvises 
and  recites  his  verses,  and  so  sets  out  upon  that  "  mindward  " 
way  which  leads  to  Sophocles  and  Dante  and  Shakspere .'' 
We  do  not  dance  Shakspere's  poetry,  we  do  not  sing  it,  we 
hardly  even  scan  it ;  why  then  this  long  pother  about  a  laps- 
ing and  traditional  form  ? 

Well,  in  the  first  place,  rhythm  is  there-  in  Sophocles, 
Dante,  Shakspere ;  it  was  sung  to  large  extent  in  the  drama 
of  Sophocles,  and  even  with  Dante  and  Shakspere  it  is  sub- 
consciously present  in  the  mind  of  every  sympathetic  reader 
who  accepts  the  verses  by  those  poor  deputies  of  aural  per- 
ception, the  eyes.  Not  the  least  of  artistic  triumphs  in  poetry 
are  concerned  directly  with  rhythm.    Those  lines  of  Hamlet,  - — 


114  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Absent  thee  from  felicity  awhile, 

And  in  this  harsh  world  draw  thy  breath  in  pain, — 

are  poetry  through  their  harmony  of  rhythmic  adjustment,  and 
if  divorced  from  rhythm  cease  to  be  poetry.  Every  good 
lyric,  even  in  modern  times,  fairly  trembles  and  prays  to  be 
sung,  at  least  to  be  taken  in  its  full  rhythmic  force ;  the 
"  pastel  in  prose  "  only  serves  to  send  us  back  to  genuine 
lyric  with  a  new  love  of  rhythmic  regularity.  In  modern 
dramatic,  epic,  and  incidental  poetry,  the  case  is  different ; 
but  this  difference  brings  no  loss  to  the  cause  of  rhythm. 
One  does  not  wish  to  read  Under  the  Greenwood  Tree  in  verse 
any  more  than  one  wishes  to  read  As  You  Like  It  in  prose. 
Meredith's  Egoist,  an  epic  prose  comedy  of  modern  life,  is 
as  satisfactory  in  its  way,  barring  the  comparisons  of  genius, 
as  Twelfth  Night  or  Much  Ado,  the  dramatic  comedy  in  verse. 
It  is  our  keen  thinking,  fastened  upon  a  character  like  Sir 
Willoughby,  like  Malvolio,  that  is  in  question ;  and  those 
soothing  cadences  which  appeal  to  the  consciousness  of  kind 
and  set  the  solitary  in  sympathetic  throngs,  as  in  a  lyric,  we 
do  not  need.  Satire  of  emotional  traits,  to  be  sure,  may 
require  the  exaggeration  of  verse  as  va.  Juvip-to-Glory  Jane ; 
but  verse  is  not  degraded  by  this,  any  more  than  it  is 
degraded  in  helping  one  to  remember  the  number  of  days 
in  a  month.  The  hold  of  rhythm  upon  modern  poetry,  even 
under  conditions  of  analytic  and  intellectual  development 
which  have  unquestionably  worked  for  the  increased  impor- 
tance of  prose,  is  a  hold  not  to  be  relaxed,  and  for  good  rea- 
son. The  reason  is  this.  In  rhythm,  in  sounds  of  the  human 
voice,  timed  to  movements  of  the  human  body,  mankind  first 
discovered  that  social  consent  which  brought  the  great  joys 
and  the  great  pains  of  life  into  a  common  utterance.  The 
mountain,  so  runs  a  Basque  proverb,  is  not  necessary  to  the 
mountain,  but  man  is  necessary  to  man.  Individual  thinking, 
a  vast   fermentation,  centrifugal   tendencies  of   every   sort, 


RHYTHM   AS   THE   ESSENTIAL   FACT   OF   POETRY      115 

have  played  upon  this  simple  and  primitive  impulse ;  but  the 
poet  is  still  essentially  emotional,  and  just  so  far  as  he  is  to 
utter  the  great  joys  and  the  great  pains  of  life,  just  so  far  he 
must  go  back  to  communal  emotions,  to  the  sense  of  kind,  to 
the  social  foundation. ^  The  mere  fact  of  utterance  is  social ; 
however  solitary  his  thought,  a  poet's  utterance  must  voice 
this  consent  of  man  with  man,  and  his  emotion  must  fall 
into  rhythm,  the  one  and  eternal  expression  of  consent. 
This,  then,  is  why  rhythm  will  not  be  banished  from  poetry 
so  long  as  poetry  shall  remain  emotional  utterance ;  for 
rhythm  is  not  only  sign  and  warrant  of  a  social  contract 
stronger,  deeper,  vaster,  than  any  fancied  by  Rousseau,  but 
it  is  the  expression  of  a  human  sense  more  keen  even  than 
the  fear  of  devils  and  the  love  of  gods,  —  the  sense  and  sym- 
pathy of  kind. 

1  "  La  sympathie  pour  les  choses,"  says  M.  de  Vogiie,  Histoire  et  Poesie,  p.  190, 
is  the  "  principe  et  raison  de  I'art  d'ecrire." 


CHAPTER    III 

THE  TWO  ELEMENTS  IN  POETRY 

The  study  of  rhythm  threw  one  fact  of  primitive  life  into 
very  strong  rehef, — the  predominance  of  masses  of  men  over 
individual  effort,^  and  the  almost  exclusive  reign  of  communal 
song  as  compared  with  poetry  of  the  solitary  artist,  with  that 
poetry  which  nowadays  makes  sole  claim  to  the  title.  Does 
this  point  to  a  fundamental  dualism  ?  Are  there  two  kinds 
of  poetry,  communal  and  artistic ;  or  must  one  say  that  the 
choral  throng  and  the  reading  pubHc,  the  improvising  singer 
and  the  modern  poet,  are  convertible  terms,  with  refrains, 
repetition,  chorus,  as  a  negligible  quantity  ?  Is  the  making 
of  poetry  really  one  process  under  all  conditions  of  produc- 
tion ;  or  does  the  main  impulse,  in  itself  everywhere  invaria- 
ble, undergo  enough  change  in  its  outward  relations  and 
conditions  to  warrant  the  division  of  its  product  into  two 
kinds  ?  Goethe  is  thought  to  have  answered  this  question  in 
his  discussion  of  certain  Lithuanian  popular  songs,  when  he 
wondered  "  that  folk  make  so  much  of  these  ballads  of  the 
people,  and  rate  them  so  high.  There  is  only  one  poetry, 
the  real  and  the  true  ;  all  else  is  approximation  and  show. 

^  Bastian,  in  his  book  Der  Volkergedanke  im  Aiifbau  eijier  Wissenschaft  vom 
Menschen,  Berlin,  1881,  pp.  8  f.,  notes  that  in  a  modern  work  of  art  one  looks 
for  traits  of  the  genius  that  brought  it  forth,  while  in  the  beginnings  of  society, 
of  institutions,  one  looks  "  for  the  unconscious  stirrings,  in  the  organism,  of  the 
average  man  who  has  realized  himself  in  them."  And  in  an  address  (same  book, 
p.  172)  on  the  aims  of  ethntjlogy,  he  declares  that  for  this  science  man  is  not  the 
individual  anihropos,  but  the  social  being,  the  zoon  polilikon  of  Aristotle,  which 
demands  the  social  state  as  condition  of  his  existence.  "  Das  Primare  ist  also 
der   Volkergedanke.^'' 

116 


THE  TWO  ELEMENTS  IN  POETRY        117 

Poetic  talent  is  given  to  the  peasant  as  well  as  to  the  knight ; 
it  depends  whether  each  lays  hold  upon  his  own  condition 
and  treats  it  as  it  deserves,  in  which  case  the  simplest  rela- 
tions will  be  the  best."  And  there  an  end,  cries  the  critic  ; 
what  more  is  to  be  said  ?  Nothing,  if  one  is  discussing  poetry 
merely  as  an  impulse  to  emotional  expression  which  springs 
simple  and  distinct  from  the  heart  of  man.  But  there  is 
more  to  be  said  when  one  treats  poetry  not  as  the  impulse, 
but  as  the  product  of  the  impulse,  a  product  falling  into  sun- 
dry classes  according  to  the  conditions  under  which  it  is 
produced.  Setting  theory  aside,  it  is  a  fact  that  critics  of 
every  sort  have  been  fain  to  look  upon  the  product  of  the 
poetic  impulse  as  something  not  simple,  but  twofold. 

As  was  the  case  with  rhythm,  where  a  tradition  of  the 
priority  of  verse  compared  with  prose  led  to  extravagant 
theories  of  early  man  as  singing  instead  of  talking,  and  real- 
izing generally  the  conditions  of  an  Italian  opera  stage,  so 
with  this  dualism  now  in  hand ;  extravagant  theories  of  folk- 
made  epics  and  self-made  songs,  have  brought  it  into  a  dis- 
credit absolutely  undeserved.  In  some  form,  to  be  sure,  this 
dualism  of  the  poetic  product  pervades  the  whole  course  of 
criticism,  and  varies  from  a  vague,  unstable  distinction  to  a 
definite  and  often  extravagant  claim  of  divided  origins ;  its 
differencing  factor  now  sunders  the  two  parts  as  by  a  chasm, 
and  now  leaves  them  with  only  the  faintest  line  between. 
Always,  however,  this  differencing  factor  is  more  than  an 
affair  of  words.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  classification  of 
materials  or  of  form,  as  when  Schleiermacher  opposes  the 
epos  and  the  drama  as  "plastic  "  to  the  purely  lyric  or  "  musi- 
cal." It  is  not  the  dualism  of  high  and  low  implied  in  Fon- 
tenelle's  delightful  "  Description  of  the  Empire  of  Poesy,"  ^ 
with  its  highlands,  including  "  that  great  city,  epic,"  and  the 
"  lofty  mountain  of  tragedy,"  burlesque,  however,  in  the  low- 

^  CEuvres,  Paris,  1790,  III.  165  ff.,  from  the  RUrcure  of  January,  1678. 


Il8  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

lands,  and  comedy,  though  a  pleasant  town,  quite  too  close  to 
these  marshes  of  farce  to  be  safe.  It  is  not  the  antithesis  of 
definition,  not  a  mere  exclusion,  —  poetry  against  science, 
pleasure  against  truth,  imaginative  verse  against  unimagina- 
tive, emotional  against  practical  and  didactic ;  not  a  separa- 
tion of  cheap,  shabby  verses  from  the  poetry  which  Ben 
Jonson  thought  perfect,  and  fit  to  be  seen  "of  none  but  grave 
and  consecrated  eyes."  In  a  loose  application,  this  twofold 
character  of  the  poetic  product  takes  the  form  of  an  antithe- 
sis between  art  and  nature,  a  vague  contrast,  with  terminology 
yet  more  vague ;  and  here,  again,  it  is  not  the  rival  claims  of 
art  and  nature  in  any  one  piece,  —  whether 

Natura  fieret  laudabile  carmen,  an  arte, 

or  in  any  one  man,  — "  the  good  poet's  made  as  well  as 
born  " ;  ^  but  it  is  the  contrast  shown  by  poetry  that  is  essen- 
tially "  natural "  in  origin,  over  against  the  rival  sprung  from 
art.  Often  it  is  impartial :  Jonson's  learned  sock,  or  the  wild 
wood-notes  of  Shakspere,  — "  with  Shakspere's  nature  or 
with  Jonson's  art,"  is  Pope's  echo  of  Milton ;  but  Milton's 
nephew,  Phillips,^  pits  "true  native  poetry"  against  "wit,  in- 
genuity, and  learning  in  verse,  even  elegancy  itself,"  —  Spen- 
ser and  Shakspere,  that  is,  against  his  moderns.  So  one 
comes  by  way  of  these  great  "  natural "  poets  to  the  rural 
muse  herself,  who  has  always  been  lauded  and  caressed 
when  eulogy  was  safe.  If  mediocrities  are  versing,  "Tom 
Piper  makes  us  better  melodic  "  ;  and  this  is  Spenser's  honest 
view,  not  his  "  ironicall  sarcasmus."     Back  to  the  shepherds, 

1  Nowhere  better  discussed  and  settled  than  in  Goethe's  sonnet,  "  Naiur  und 
Kunst,  sie  scheinen  sich  zujliehen"  with  its  concluding  lines:  — 

In  der  Beschrankung  zeigt  sich  erst  der  Meister, 
Und  das  Gesetz  nur  kann  uns  Freiheit  geben. 

"^  Theatrum  Poeiarum,   first  published    1675,   ed.  Brydges,  Canterbury,  1800 
(who  limits  it  to  English  poets,  so  changing  the  title),  p.  xxxvi. 


THE  TWO  ELEMENTS  IN  POETRY        119 

says  poetry,  when  it  is  tired  of  too  much  art;  rustic  and 
homely  and  unlettered,  is  opposed  to  urban  and  lettered  and 
polite,  song  of  the  fields  to  verse  that  looks  across  an  ink- 
stand at  folios  of  the  study.  But  this  tendency  in  criticism  to 
rebuke  poetry  of  the  schools,  its  rouge  and  powder,  by  point- 
ing to  the  fresh  cheeks  of  unspoiled  rustic  verse,  is  hardly  to 
the  purpose. 

Passing  from  this  loose  and  popular  account  of  the  dualism, 
one  finds  the  contrast,  still  mainly  unhistorical,  but  stated 
with  precision,  in  the  aesthetic  realm.  Schiller,  one  of  the 
masters  in  that  school  which  combined  metaphysical  theory 
with  critical  insight,  divided  poetry  into  the  naive  and  the 
sentimental ;  his  famous  essay,  however,  should  be  read  along 
with  his  poem  on  the  Kiinstlcr,  and  with  A.  W.  Schlegel's 
review  of  the  poem ;  unsatisfactory  as  Schiller  thought  his 
verse,  it  gives  a  historical  comment  on  his  theory,  and  he 
used  the  idea  of  it  for  his  ^Esthetic  Letters.  It  shows  how 
art,  —  thought  and  purpose,  that  is,  —  slowly  took  the  place 
of  spontaneity,  and  so  it  gives  a  better  because  a  historical 
statement  of  the  dualism  in  hand.  Still,  the  phrase  of  naive 
and  sentimental  passed  into  vogue  ;  this  is  almost  as  much  as 
to  say  objective  and  subjective ;  and  one  knows  what  riot  of 
discussion  followed.  Ancient  was  set  against  modern,  the 
old  dispute,  realist  against  idealist,  classic  against  romantic, 
conservative  against  radical  ;  add  short  and  pithy  phrases 
from  Goethe,  dithyrambs  on  "om-mject  and  sum-mject " 
from  Coleridge ;  drop  then,  a  nine  days'  fall,  to  the  minor 
treatises  in  aesthetics  :  the  thought  of  a  century  has  been 
ringing  changes  on  this  dualism.  They  are  not  to  be  noted 
here,  and  are  seldom  to  the  purpose.  Moses  Mendelssohn's 
division  into  the  "voluntary"  and  the  "natural"  looks  at 
first  sight  like  an  oracle  from  Herder ;  but  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  Mendelssohn  refused  to  regard  as  poetry  those 
waifs  and  strays  of  song  which  Herder  praised.     Masing,  in 


120  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

a  dissertation  1  of  considerable  merit,  divides  into  poetry  of 
perception,  which  is  rimeless,  answering  to  the  classical  or  the 
objective,  and  poetry  of  feeling,  which  is  rimed  and  includes 
Christian,  individual  poetry  :  but  there  is  no  great  gain  in 
this.  Mr.  E.  C.  Stedman  ^  thinks  poetry  is  "  differentiated 
by  the  Me  and  the  Not  Me,"  and  thus  he  obtains  his  two  main 
divisions  of  the  poetic  product.  So  run  some  of  the  purely 
theoretical  contrasts ;  without  stay  in  historic  study,  their 
distinctions  are  based  upon  the  poetic  impulse,  and  there  is 
of  course  a  far  clearer  case  when  one  considers  poetry  in  the 
light  of  those  conditions  under  which  it  is  produced.  JEs- 
thetic  writers  who  apply  the  tests  of  sociology,  for  example, 
have  made  a  vast  gain  in  their  method  of  treatment  and  in 
their  results.  Poetry  to  them  is  no  vague,  alien  substance,  a 
planet  to  be  watched  through  telescopes ;  it  is  an  outcome  of 
the  social  life  of  man,  and  social  facts  must  help  to  explain 
it.  Critic,  historian,  psychologist,  all  put  new  life  into  the 
aesthetic  discussion ;  and  the  artist  himself  is  at  hand. 
Earlier  than  Taine,  Hennequin,  and  Guyau,  and  along  with 
Sainte-Beuve,  Richard  Wagner,^  in  a  practical  purpose,  and 
full  of  the  ideas  of  1848,  tried  to  bring  the  conditions  of 
artistic  production  into  Hne  with  the  study  of  society.  It  is 
not  nature,  he  thinks,  but  the  opposition  to  nature  which  has 
brought  forth  art ;  man  becomes  independent  of  climate ; 
and  social,  human  struggle  is  the  making  of  this  new  man, 
this  "  man  independent  of  nature,"  who  alone  called  art  into 
being,  and  that  not  in  tropical  Asia,  but  "  on  the  naked  hill- 
sides  of    Greece."      Primitive   man,    dependent   on    nature, 

1  Ueier  Ur sprung  und  Verbreitung  des  Reimes,  Dorpat,  1 866,  p.  i8.  "An- 
schauung  "  and  "  Empfindung  "  are  the  terms. 

2  Natu7-e  and  Elements  of  Poetry,  pp.  76  f. 

^  Gesammelte  Schriften  und  Dichtungen,  Bd.  III.,  three  essays,  "  Die  Kunst 
und  die  Revolution"  (1849);  "Das  Kunstwerk  der  Zukunft,"  a  more  important 
work,  dithyrambic,  but  highly  interesting  and  full  of  the  "  folk,"  as  against  "  Ihr 
Tntclligenten  ";   and  thirdly,  "  Kunst  und  Klima  "  (1850). 


THE   TWO    ELEMENTS    IN    POETRY  1 21 

could  never  bring  forth  art,  a  social  product  made  in  the 
teeth  of  adverse  natural  conditions.^  Wagner,  however, 
goes  further.  Such  is  the  history  of  art ;  but  what  of  its 
future  ?  Art,  literature,  have  become  a  solitary  piece  of 
performance  and  of  reception.  The  lonely  modern  man, 
pining  for  poetic  satisfaction,  has  but  a  sad  and  feeble  com- 
fort in  the  poetry  of  letters.  Back  to  social  conditions,  back 
to  the  old  trinity  of  song,  movement,  poem ;  back  to  the 
ensemble,  the  folk-idea,  the  poetry  of  a  people ;  let  Shaks- 
pere  and  Beethoven  join  hands  in  the  art  that  is  to  be  and 
that  must  spring,  as  it  once  sprang,  from  no  single  individual 
artist  but  from  the  folk  !  ^  Dithyramb  apart,  here  is  a  theory 
of  social  origins  with  a  definite  though  curious  dualism  of  art 
and  nature  ;  Wagner  talks  Jacob-GrwiiniscJi,  it  is  true,  and 
raves  as  Nietzsche  raved  afterward ;  but  he  has  sociological 
hints  for  which  one  searches  the  school  of  Grimm  in  vain. 
Even  in  Victor  Hugo's  fantastic  but  suggestive  phrases,^  the 
new  science,  the  agitation  of  St.  Simon  and  his  school,  may 
perhaps  be  found ;  and  there  is  no  disguise  of  any  sort  in  the 
sociological  aesthetics  of  Guyau,^  who  repeats  Hugo's  notion 
in  scientific  terms,  and  so  gives  a  precise  expression  to  the 
dualism  once  so  vague.  Primitive  art,  according  to  Guyau, 
is  a  waking  vision,  and  what  we  now  call  invention  was  at 
first  nothing  but  a  spontaneous  play  of  fancies  and  images 
suggesting  and  following  one  another  in  the  confusion  of  a 
dream.  Real  art  begins  when  this  pastime  comes  to  be  work, 
when  thought  and  effort  seize  upon  the  play  of  fancy.^ 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  255  f.,  261,  268. 

2  See  especially  ibid.,  pp.  133-207. 

8  Preface  to  Cromwell,  p.  16:  "La  societe,  en  effet,  commence  par  chanter  ce 
qu'elle  reve,  puis  raconte  ce  qu'elle  fait,  et  enfin  se  met  a  peindre  ce  qu'elle 
pense,"  Hugo's  well-known  sequence  of  lyric,  epic,  drama. 

*  U .Art  au  Point  de  Vue  Sociologique,  p.  26. 

^  This  doctrine  is  in  line  with  modern  psychological  notions  of  the  part  played 
by  intelligent  mental  selection  upon  the  instinctive  material  of  consciousness. 
See  Lloyd  Morgan,  Habit  and  Instinct,  pp.  323  f. 


122  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

These  were  mainly  critical  and  aesthetic  views.  Of  greater 
interest  and  importance  is  the  dualism  as  it  took  shape  under 
the  hands  of  that  historical  school  which  had  the  great  demo- 
cratic movement  in  Hterature  for  its  origin,  Herder  for  its 
prophet,  and  A.  W.  Schlegel  for  its  high  priest.  Here  the 
dualism  concerns  not  so  much  nature  and  art,  uncertain  terms 
at  best,  but  the  body  of  people,  the  folk,  the  community, 
nation,  race,  as  contrasted  with  the  individual  artist,  the 
"  man  of  letters."  It  is  poetry  of  the  people  over  against 
poetry  of  the  schools.  Conditions  of  this  sort  had  been 
noted  by  earlier  writers  of  what  one  may  call  the  scientific 
bent,  that  is,  by  men  like  Scaliger,  who  in  this  respect  was 
following  Aristotle ;  not,  of  course,  by  those  who  looked 
upon  the  oldest  poet  as  divine,  a  prophet  and  a  seer,  the 
view  taken  by  Platonists  like  Spenser^  and  Sidney,  by  the 
early  renaissance,  by  Ronsard,  and  by  belated  followers  of 
Ronsard.  He,  for  example,  not  only  says  that  earliest  poetry 
was  allegorical  theology,  to  coax  rough  men  into  ideas  of  the 
divine,'^  but,  in  his  preface  about  music,^  written  for  a  collec- 
tion of  songs  and  addressed  to  the  king,  he  holds  to  the 
idea  of  a  spontaneous  and  sacred  perfection  in  this  primitive 
verse.  Later,  so  he  explains  in  his  Poetics,  came  "the 
second  class  of  poets,  whom  I  call  human,  since  they  were 
filled  rather  with  artifice  and  labour  than  with  divinity,"  — 
nature  and  art,  again,  in  pious  antithesis.  It  is  different  with 
the  scientific  school.  Scaliger,  following  Aristotle's  hints 
about  the  origin  of  the  drama,  is  for  a  normal  process  from 
the  natural   to  the   artistic.      Dante   had   made   dualism   a 

^  See  ShepheanVs  Calender,  October,  Argument,  —  a  specimen  of  the  doctrine 
in  that  never-published  English  Poete. 

2  "  Abbrege  de  I'Art  Poetique,"  in  Works,  ed.  Blanchemain,  VII.  318. 

^  Ibid.,  VII.  340.  "Aussi  les  divines  fureurs  de  Musique,  de  Poesie,  et  de 
paincture,  ne  viennent  pas  par  degres  en  perfection  comme  les  aulres  sciences, 
mais  par  boutees  et  comme  esclairs  de  feu,  qui  de^u  qui  dela  apparoissent  en  divers 
pays,  puis  tout  en  un  coup  s'esvanouissent." 


THE  TWO  ELEMENTS  IN  POETRY        123 

matter  of  rank,  of  merit,  setting  the  vulgarc  illustre  apart 
from  the  Jiumile  vulgare,  and  bidding  spontaneous,  facile 
poets  beware  how  they  undertake  the  things  that  belong  to 
art ;  ^  ScaUger  is  not  only  historical  but  comparative,  and  in 
the  right  fashion,  assuming,  at  least  for  origins,  no  gradations 
of  rank.  He  is  not  for  degeneration  but  for  development ; 
instead  of  dividing  the  sheep  from  the  goats,  he  regards 
nature  and  art  as  two  phases  of  the  poetic  conditions.  Look- 
ing at  the  three  forms  of  primitive  life,^  he  gives  the  parent- 
age of  verse  to  the  pastoral ;  hunters  were  too  mobile,  and 
ploughmen  too  busy,  while  shepherds  had  not  only  leisure  for 
meditation  but  the  songs  of  birds  as  lure.  In  this  earliest 
stage  Scaliger  assumes  two  kinds  of  poetry,  which  he 
calls  the  solitary  and  the  social ;  and  again  in  the  second 
division  he  makes  a  further  contrast  of  the  artless  or  natural, 
—  not,  he  warns  his  reader,  not  to  be  classed  as  vulgar,  — 
and  the  more  artistic,  such  as  those  amoebean  forms  which 
are  found  in  later  pastoral  verse.  In  other  words,  Scaliger 
hints  at  a  fundamental  dualism ;  and  his  account  of  the 
matter,  modern  in  spirit  despite  its  conventional  style  and 
its  appeal  to  the  ancients,  is  better  than  Herder's  cloudy 
enthusiasm  in  all  respects  save  one,  and  that,  of  course,  an 
exception  of  vast  importance:  Scaliger  failed  to  put  the 
rustic  and  communal  verse  of  Europe  on  a  par  with  "nat- 
ural "  and  social  songs  of  the  prime. 

This  distinction  of  art  and  nature  as  a  theory  of  origins, 
and  with  a  touch  of  the  historical  method  in  its  treatment, 
is  found  again  and  again  in  treatises  on  poetry  from  the 
renaissance  to  our  own  time.^     It  is  by  no  means  confined 

1  For  writers  in  the  vulgar  tongue,  Dante  reverses  the  rule  of  more  matter  and 
less  art.  They  are  too  facile.  "  Pudeat  ergo,  pudeat  idiotas  tantum  audere 
deinceps,  ut  ad  cantiones  prorumpant,"  de  vulgar.  Eloq.,  Cap.  vi.  The  canzone 
must  not  be  content  with  the  speech  of  common  life;   let  it  essay  an  exalted  style. 

-  Cap.  iv.,  Pastoralia,  p.  6. 

^  G.  J.  Vossius,  de  artis  poetic ce  natiira,  1 647,  Cap.  iii.  Many  subsequent 
writers  followed  Scaliger's  account  of  origins. 


124  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

to  the  brilliant  and  epoch-making  writers.  Who  was  farther 
removed  from  Herder,  so  far  as  notions  about  poetry  are 
concerned,  than  Gottsched  ?  But  Gottsched,  dull  dog,  as 
Dr.  Johnson  would  have  called  him,  makes  a  clear  distinc- 
tion between  natural  and  artistic  verse ;  ^  more  than  this, 
he  backs  his  theory  of  origins  by  referring  to  those  "  songs 
of  the  hill  folk,"  heard  in  his  own  day,  which  still  show 
characteristics  of  primitive  poetry.  Earlier  yet,  in  the 
remarkable  work  of  Morhof  ^  one  finds  use  of  the  comparative 
method  and  a  keen  sense  of  historic  values  ;  here  is  investiga- 
tion, not  theory  outright,  as  with  the  younger  Racine,^  or  mere 
chronicle,  as  with  M.  de  la  Nauze.^  It  is  curious,  too,  that 
from  the  clergy  came  some  of  the  most  rationalistic  accounts 
of  the  dualism  of  nature  and  art,  in  opposition  to  the  divine 
and  human  idea  of  the  renaissance.  One  must  not  forget 
Herder's  cloth;  Lowth  took  Hebrew  poetry,  as  poetry,  quite 
out  of  the  supernatural ;  and  Calmet,^  whose  work  on  the 
Bible  was  once  valued  by  scholars,  comments  at  length  on 
the    dualism    as  natural   and   artificial,    not    as    human    and 

1  Critische  Dichtkunst,  1737,  pp.  86,  72. 

2  Unterricht  von  der  teutscheti  Sprache  und  Poesie,  dcren  Ursprung,  Fortgang 
und  Lehrs'dtzen,  Kiel,  1682.  This  book  has  been  called  the  first  attempt  at  a 
history  of  German,  and,  indeed,  of  collective  European,  poetry.  Morhof  gives 
a  historic  account  of  rime,  compares  German  verse  with  verse  of  other  nations, 
and  is  the  first  writer  in  Germany  to  name  Shakspere. 

^  "  De  la  Poesie  Naturelle  ou  de  la  Langue  Poetique "  and  "  De  la  Poesie 
Artificielle,"  in  Mem.  Acad.  Inscript.,  XV.  192  ff.,  207  ff.  (1739).  The  only 
interest  lies  in  the  titles,  the  text  is  all  verbal  quibbling.  In  Mem.,  XXIII.  85  ff., 
is  a  plan  for  a  general  history  of  poetry.     But  Racine  Junior  is  negligible. 

*  Ibid.,  IX.  320  f.  (1731-1733),  in  a  paper  on  the  songs  of  ancient  Greece. 
He  repeats  the  idea  that  art  comes  out  of  nature,  but  lays  stress  on  a  development 
of  special  singers,  a  sort  of  guild,  as  contrasted  with  earlier  universality  of  song. 
This  is  the  contrast  made  afterward  by  Wilhelm  Grimm  {Ileldensage,  2d  ed., 
pp.  382  f.)  between  "  free  "  and  professional  song. 

^  Augustini  Calmei  dissertaiio  depoesi  veterum  Hebraeoriwi,  .  .  .  Helmstadii, 
1723.  A  French  version  is  in  the  Dissertationes  qui  peuvent  servir  de  Prologo- 
7iienes  de  VEcriture  Sainte,  .  .  .  Paris,  1720,  3  vols.,  I.  128  ff.  See  particularly 
15  ff.  of  the  Latin :  "  Duo  habentur  Poeseos  genera :  naturale  et  artificiale," 
etc. 


THE   TWO   ELEMENTS   IN   POETRY  125 

divine.  Improvisation  seems  to  be  his  test  for  the  natural 
sort,  submission  to  rules  and  deliberation,  his  test  for  artifi- 
cial verse ;  and  in  the  first  case  it  is  wrath,  joy,  sorrow,  hate, 
love,  some  natural  outburst  of  passion,  which  is  poetry  by 
the  mere  fact  of  its  utterance.  Moreover,  this  poetry  of 
nature  is  found  in  every  clime ;  ^  and  inseparable  from  it, 
in  early  stages,  is  the  natural  music,  song,  which  itself  in 
course  of  time  must  be  tamed  by  art.  Like  Budde  in  our 
own  day,  Calmet  points  out  "  natural "  songs  in  the  Bible. 
It  was  left,  however,  for  Herder  to  bring  forward  all  natural, 
artless  poetry  not  as  a  regret  but  as  a  hope,  or  rather  as  a 
disinherited  exile  come  back  to  claim  his  own  ;  how  the 
German  pleaded  for  his  client,  and  with  what  success,  is 
matter  of  common  fame.  At  the  historical  school  of  which 
he  is  the  conspicuous  exponent  in  matters  of  poetry  we 
must  give  a  closer  look. 

Herder,  in  point  of  fact,  was  before  a  larger  tribunal  than 
that  of  poetry,  and  in  his  plea  for  communal  verse  he  was  join- 
ing the  great  democratic  movement  which  ran  through  Euro- 
pean thought  at  large,  no  less  active  because  less  conspicuous 
in  science,  art,  letters,  religion,  than  in  affairs  of  state.  A  pas- 
sion for  democracy  had  gone  from  literature  into  politics  and 
again  from  politics  into  literature,  begetting  this  notion  of  crea- 
tive power  in  the  people  as  a  whole ;  about  the  time  that  phi- 
losophers discovered  the  people  in  politics,  Hamann  and 
Herder  discovered  the  folk  in  verse.  The  earlier  eighteenth 
century,  like  all  the  preceding  Christian  centuries  from  the 
time  of  St.  Augustine,^  when  saint  or  prophet  or  king  was  the 
embodiment  of  progress,  still  turned  history  into  biography, 

1  "  Non  incommode  ergo  dicimus,  Poesin  methodicam  artem  esse,  accurate  et 
studiose  exprimendi  passiones,  naturalem  vero,  quae  sine  arte,  sine  meditatione 
praevia,  eas  sistit.  Omnis  populus,  omnis  terra,  omne  temperamentum,  omnis 
affectus  sua  non  destituitur  rhetorica  aut  poesi  naturali.  .  .  .  Natura  semper 
producit  rudius  aliquid,  quod  ars  perficere  conatur." 

*  See  Barth,  Die  Philosophie  der  Geschichte  ah  Sociologie,  Leipzig,  1 897, 1.  202. 


126  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY 

and  human  development  into  a  series  of  individual  inventions ; 
any  movement  in  social  life,  whether  of  war  or  of  peace,  was 
due  to  the  great  man,  —  general,  king,  orator,  poet,  —  who 
began  or  led  the  movement.  Pascal's  pleasantr}"^  about  Cleo- 
patra and  her  nose  became  a  serious  system  of  history  and 
philosophy.  Even  as  late  as  Turgot,^  for  example,  one  pinned 
one's  faith  to  great  men,  to  genius,  for  the  advancement  of 
mankind.  The  seventeenth  century  had  asked  for  raison ; 
the  eighteenth  sought  esprit?  Genius  was  already  a  watch- 
word when  the  democratic  movement  began,  and  it  was  not 
discarded  by  the  new  school ;  the  Rousseaus  and  Herders 
clung  to  genius,  but  with  a  new  interpretation  of  the  word, 
and  added  that  larger  idea  of  "nature."  Critics  are  apt  to 
forget  that  the  return  to  nature  was  preceded  by  a  return  to 
genius.  The  next  step  was  to  substitute  natural  genius  for 
the  great  man,  to  separate  genius  from  the  individual ;  and 
here  the  democratic  movement  found  help  at  hand  in  the 
progress  and  gains  of  science.  Science  was  now  clear  of  the 
church,  and  began  to  work  into  the  domain  of  law,  causes, 
force ;  it  sought  the  impersonal  both  in  natural  and  in  super- 
natural things.  Cold  and  analytic  in  the  earlier  decades,  sci- 
ence in  the  later  eighteenth  century  grew  emotional,  synthetic, 
romantic,  and  full  of  zeal  for  what  the  Germans  call  "combi- 
nation." What  a  change  from  the  earlier  mood,  represented, 
one  might  say,  in  Shaftesbury's  letter  on  enthusiasm  !  "  Good 
humour,"  he  writes  in  1707,^  "is  not  only  the  best  security 
against  enthusiasm,  but  the  best  foundation  of  piety  and  true 
religion."     Even  as  late  as  1766,  when  the  spirit  of  enthusi- 

'  "  .Sur  les  progres  successifs  de  I'esprit  humain,"  CEuvres,  II.  597  ff. 

2  On  this  change  in  poetic  criticism,  see  Von  Stein,  Entstehung  der  neue7-en 
Aesthetik,  p.  97.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  while  Turgot  clung  to 
the  individual  in  this  sense,  his  search  for  laws  of  progress,  movements,  tenden- 
cies, was  really  preparing  ruin  for  individualism,  and  making  Condorcet's  and 
Herder's  task  more  easy. 

'  Characteristics,  5th  ed.,  Birmingham,  1765,  I.  22. 


THE   TWO   ELEMENTS    IN   POETRY  12/ 

asm  was  again  abroad,  aristocratic  Horace  Walpole  sounds 
the  old  note  against  the  new  communalism  in  his  account 
of  a  sermon  which  he  heard  Wesley  preach  at  Bath ;  the 
preacher  "exalted  his  voice,  and  acted  very  ugly  ent/iiisiasm.'' 
Enthusiasm,  however,  was  now  rife  in  science  itself ;  still 
blocked  on  the  theological  side,  it  turned  to  nature  and 
what  lay  undiscovered  in  her  domain.  No  talk  as  yet  of 
a  struggle  for  existence,  no  distinct  lapse  of  faith  in  human- 
ity as  main  object  of  cosmic  solicitudes;  but  a  disposition 
to  find  in  the  sweep  and  conflict  of  natural  forces  suffi- 
ciently good  answer  to  any  question  about  the  history  of  man, 
and  a  tendency  to  force  upon  individual  men  a  transfer  of 
values  to  the  race.  Not  the  individual,  but  the  mass,  and 
behind  this  mass  the  currents  of  life  at  large,  were  to  inter- 
pret history.  The  great  man  disappeared,  or  else  served 
simply  as  mouthpiece  for  the  national  and  popular  genius ; 
and  it  was  at  this  point  that  Herder  appeared  with  his  Thoiights 
for  the  Philosophy  of  the  History  of  Mankind,  —  thoughts 
that  here  and  there  foreshadow  the  doctrine  of  evolution. 
Down  to  the  extreme  theories  of  Buckle,  this  point  of  view 
was  taken  by  historians  and  philosophers.  True,  much  is 
said  of  the  individual ;  Rousseau,  Goethe  in  his  Wcrther, 
Herder,  even,  and  Hamann,  all  glorified  the  free,  individual 
man ;  it  is  not  individual  man  in  the  old  sense,  however,  but 
rather  man  himself  as  type  of  the  human  brotherhood,  as  one 
of  a  throng,  the  "citizen"  whether  high  or  low.  More  than 
this,  it  was  a  glorification  of  primitive  man  himself  without 
the  differencing  and  individualizing  work  of  culture  ;  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  and  not  merely  in  Rousseau's  sentimental 
fashion,  discovered  the  savage  on  one  side,  and,  on  the  other 
side,  unspoiled  men  of  the  prime.  In  literature  there  was  an 
outbreak  of  gentle  savages  and  a  very  mob  of  Robinson  Cru- 
soes  ;  while  for  philosophy  and  science,  the  alchemy  of  human 
perfectibility,  a  desire  to  reconstruct  society  by  the  elixir  of 


128  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

primitive  life  and  a  study  of  man  as  he  ought  to  be,  preceded 
the  chemistry  of  modern  anthropological  and  sociological 
researches,  which  aim  at  an  analysis  of  earliest  social  condi- 
tions and  the  science  of  man  both  as  he  was  and  as  he  is. 

This  democratic  thought  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  an 
outer  and  an  inner  circle,  answering  in  great  measure  to  the 
notion  of  humanity  and  the  notion  of  the  people  or  "folk." 
It  was  Vico  who  put  men  upon  the  first  trail,  who  reformed 
scientific  methods,  and  who,  with  all  his  antiquated  theories, 
is  often  so  surprisingly  modern.  He  bade  men  look  for  the 
mind  of  humanity,  the  soul  of  it,  as  revealed  in  history,  poetry, 
law,  language,  religion.  He  traced  something  of  the  inner 
circle  as  well,  tossing  aside  Homer's  personality,  and  saying 
that  Homer  was  the  Greek  people  itself  as  it  told  the  story 
of  its  deeds.  He  set  up  the  antithesis  between  imagination 
and  reason,  and  gave  the  formula  of  culture  as  a  decrease  of 
the  one  and  an  increase  of  the  other.  Herder  said  these 
things  seventy  years  later,  and  indeed  his  mere  plea  for 
humanity  and  nationality  ^  adds  little  to  the  ideas  of  Vico ; 
what  the  German  added  of  his  own  was  on  the  larger  scale 
a  substitution  of  people  for  race,  and  on  the  smaller  scale  a 
plea  for  the  actual  folk  about  one,  the  community  of  rustics, 
the  village  throng,  not  ideahzed  shepherds  and  subjects  of 
the  Saturnian  reign.  From  Vico  to  Herder,  then,  democracy 
was  in  the  air,  pervading  the  rationalism  that  so  easily  turned 
into  sentiment  and  the  naturalism  that  so  readily  fabled  a 
new  supernaturalism.  Particularly  in  its  theories  of  poetry 
the  eighteenth  century  responded  to  the  democratic  impulse 
along  three  lines,  the  scientific,  the  historical,  and  what  one 
would  now  call  the  ethnological  and  sociological.^    A  detailed 

^  S/immen  der  V'olker,  Dedication:  Euch  weiJi'  ich  die  Stimme  des  Volks 
der  zerstreueten  Menschheit. 

2  Leslie  Stephen,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  II. 
Chap.  XII.  §  vii.,  divides  the  general  course  of  thought  into  sentimental,  romantic, 
and  rationalistic  tendencies. 


THE  TWO  ELEMENTS  IN  POETRY        129 

account  of  these  three  currents  of  thought  in  their  effect  upon 
the  study  of  poetry  would  be  of  interest  and  profit  in  the 
present  work,  but  demands  too  much  space ;  it  must  be 
reserved  for  separate  treatment.  We  must  confine  our  atten- 
tion to  the  movement  for  communal  or  popular  verse,  and 
even  that  must  be  described  in  merest  outline. 

The  first  man  in  Europe  to  recognize  poetry  of  the  people, 
and  to  make  it  a  term  of  the  dualism  now  in  hand,  was  Mon- 
taigne. He  discovered  the  thing  and  gav^e  a  name  to  it,  —  la 
poesie  popiilaire ;  he  praised  it  for  its  power  and  grace;  and 
he  brought  it  into  line  with  that  poetry  of  savages  then  first 
coming  into  the  view  of  European  critics.  The  specimen 
which  he  gave  of  this  savage  verse  remained  for  a  long  time 
the  only  one  commonly  known  in  Europe;  in  like  manner, 
a  Lapland  Lament,  published  in  Scheffer's  Latin,  came  to 
be  the  conventional  specimen  of  lowly  or  popular  song. 
Montaigne,  however,  spoke  boldly  for  the  critical  value  of 
both  kinds,  savage  and  popular,  bidding  them  hold  up  their 
heads  in  the  presence  of  art.  He  praises  the  two  extremes 
of  poetic  development,  nature  and  simplicity  on  the  one 
hand,  and,  on  the  other,  noble  artistic  effort ;  for  what  Cotton 
translates  as  "  the  mongrets  "  he  has  open  scorn. ^  Along 
with  the  savage  verses  which  he  quotes  in  another  essay  ^ 
he  makes  shrewd  comments  on  the  refrain  and  the  danc- 
ing, shows  an  interest  in  ethnology,  and  even  names  his 
authorities,  —  "a  man  in  my  house  who  lived  ten  or  twelve 
years  in  the  New  World,"  and  in  smaller  degree  natives  to 

^  Essais,  I.  liv.,  near  the  end :  "  La  poesie  populere  et  purement  naturelle  a 
des  naifvetez  et  graces  par  ou  elle  se  compare  a  la  principale  beaute  de  la  poesie 
parfaicte  selon  I'art :  comme  il  se  voit  es  villanelles  de  Gascoigne,  et  aus  Chansons 
qu'on  nous  raporte  des  nations  qui  n'ont  conoissance  d'aucun  sciance  ny  mesnies 
d'escriture.  La  poesie  mediocre  qui  s'arrete  entre  deus  est  desdeignee,  sans 
honur  et  sans  pris." 

2  On  Cannibals,  L  xxx.  "  Ce  premier  couplet,  c'est  le  refrain  de  la  chanson. 
.  .  .     Toute  la  journee  se  passe  h.  dancer." 


130  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

whom  he  talked  at  Rouen.  Now  this  insight,  this  outlook,  of 
Montaigne  are  unique.  Sidney,  whom  a  German  scholar^ 
praises  for  catholicity  of  taste  equal  to  that  of  Montaigne 
and  not  derived  from  him,  is  too  academic ;  he  notes  the 
areytos  of  America,  by  way  of  proof  that  rudest  nations  have 
poetry,  and  bursts  out  in  that  praise  of  "the  old  song  of 
Percy  and  Douglas,"  only  to  take  away  from  its  critical  value 
by  a  limitation  quite  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  Montaigne. 
Neither  Sidney  nor  Puttenham,^  in  their  notice  of  savage  and 
of  communal  poetry,  came  anywhere  near  the  Frenchman's 
point  of  view. 

The  catholicity  and  discernment  of  Montaigne,  the  careless 
approval  of  Sidney,  the  comparative  vein  in  Puttenham,  had 
really  no  following  in  Europe  until  Herder's  time.  Poetry 
of  the  people  remained  a  literary  outcast ;  and  as  late  as 
1775  a  German  professor  "  would  have  felt  insulted  by  the 
mere  idea  of  any  attention  "  to  such  verse.^  Englishmen,  to 
be  sure,  began  long  before  this  to  collect  the  ballads,  to  print 
them,  and  even  to  write  about  them  in  a  shamefaced  way ; 
but  this  was  eccentricity  of  the  kind  for  which,  according 
to  Matthew  Arnold,  continental  folk  still  make  allowance. 
Ambrose  Phillips,  or  whoever  made  the  collection  begun  in 
1723,  is  very  bold  in  his  first  volume  ;  he  "will  enter  upon  the 
praise  of  ballads  and  shew  their  antiquity ;  "  in  the  second 
volume  he  weakens,  and  will  "  say  as  little  upon  the  subject 
as  possibly  "  he  can ;  while  in  the  third  volume  he  actually 
apologizes  for  the  "  ludicrous  manner  "  in  which  he  wrote  the 
two  other  prefaces.  He  had  suggested  that  the  ballads  were 
really  "  written  by  the  greatest  and  most  polite  wits  of  their 
age  "  ;  but  nobody  in  England  paid  much  heed  to  the  subject 
of  origins,  barring  a  little  powder  burnt  over  the  thing  by 

^  Fresenius,  Deutsche  Litter aturzeitung,  1892,  col.  769  ff. 

2  Or  whoever  wrote  the  book.     See  Arber's  ed.,  pp.  26,  53. 

2  So  says  Ferdinand  Wolf  in  his  famous  essay  on  Spanish  ballads. 


THE   TWO    ELEMENTS   IN   POETRY  131 

Percy  and  Ritson ;  and  the  making  of  a  theory,  the  founding 
of  ballad  criticism  and  research  as  a  literary  discipline,  was 
left  to  German  pens. 

It  has  been  said  that  Herder  was  the  prophet  of  the  faith 
in  communal  poetry.  Herder's  "origins,"  so  far  as  this  doc- 
trine is  concerned,  are  interesting  enough.  That  the  indi- 
vidual is  child  of  his  time,  child  of  his  race,  child  of  his  soil ; 
that  he  is  not  only  what  "  suns  and  winds  and  waters  "  make 
him,  but  what  long  ages  and  vast  conspiracies  of  nature  and 
the  sum  of  human  struggle  have  made  him,  — strand  by  strand 
of  this  cord  can  be  brought  from  Hamann,  from  Blackwell, 
Lowth,  Robert  Wood,  Hurd,  Spence,  from  Condorcet,  Montes- 
quieu, Rousseau  ;  but  all  that  does  not  make  up  Herder.  It 
was  his  grasp  of  this  entire  evolutionary  process,  his  belief  in 
it,  his  fiery  exhortation,  in  a  word,  his  genius,  that  made  him 
the  only  begetter  of  the  modern  science.  Full  of  scorn  for 
closet  verse  of  his  day,  he  held  up  the  racial  or  national, 
the  "popular"  in  its  best  sense,  against  the  pedantic  and 
the  laboured,  —  poetry  that  beats  with  the  pulse  of  a  whole 
people  against  poetry  that  copies  its  exercises  from  a  dead 
page  and  has  no  sense  of  race.  He  sundered  poetry  for  the 
ear  from  poetry  for  the  eye,  poetry  said  or  sung  from  poetry 
that  looks  to  "  a  paper  eternity  "  for  its  reward.  Under  his 
hands,  in  a  word,  the  dualism  became  real,  a  state  of  things 
impossible  while  one  was  juggling  with  an  adjective  hke 
"natural"  or  with  a  phrase  like  "naive  and  sentimental." 
He  gathered  and  printed  songs  of  the  folk,  as  he  calls  them, 
or  by  another  title,  voices  of  the  nations. ^  Here,  of  course,  is 
lack  of  precision ;  a  peasant's  song  and  a  soliloquy  of  Ham- 
let, one  because  really  "popular,"  the  other  because  really 
"national,"  are  ranged  alike  as  folksongs.  But  the  dualism 
stands.      Oral,  traditional,  communal  poetry,  and  whatever 

1  Stimmen  der  Volker  and  Volkslieder.  Volkslied  is  original  with  Herder. 
See  note,  p.  xxvi.,  of  the  author's  Old  English  Ballads. 


132  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

springs  from  these,  are  set  clearly  against  poetry  of  the  schools. 
Naturally,  Herder  was  unjust  to  the  cause  of  art,  or  rather  he 
seems  to  be  unjust.  What  he  does  is  to  bid  the  artist  stand 
for  a  community  or  race  and  reflect  their  life,  or  else  fall,  a 
negligible  and  detached  thing.  Poetry  is  a  spring  of  water 
from  the  living  rock  of  community  or  nation  ;  whether  Moses, 
Homer,  Shakspere,  dealt  the  unsealing  blow,  or  whether  the 
waters  gushed  out  of  their  own  force,  Herder  cared  not  a 
whit. 

This  doctrine  of  a  dualism  in  poetry  was  still  further 
elaborated  by  A.  W.  Schlegel,  who  brought  to  the  task  not 
only  his  unerring  literary  tact,^  his  critical  insight,  his  astound- 
ing sympathy  for  foreign  literatures,  but  his  method  of  his- 
torical and  genetic  research.  In  his  early  essay  on  Dante, 
he  broke  away  from  the  method  then  in  vogue,  and  used  his- 
torical tests  instead  of  that  philosophical  analysis  so  dear  to 
Schiller.  No  one  has  stated  the  dualism  of  communal  and 
artistic  poetry  so  clearly  as  Schlegel  has  done ;  ^  and  yet, 
owing  to  a  curious  lack  of  perspective  in  modern  criticism,  he 
is  credited  with  the  achievement  of  crushing  the  dualism  to 
naught.  Leaving  the  details  to  another  occasion,  we  may 
give  a  brief  outline  of  this  case,  which  has  so  distinct  a  bear- 
ing on  the  question  of  poetical  origins.  In  his  lectures  and 
in  sundry  essays,  Schlegel  states  the  historical  dualism,  and 
repeats  Aristotle's  account  of  early  communal  and  improvised 
verse,  adding,  however,  what  Aristotle  refused  to  give,  recog- 
nition of  this  as  poetry  and  respect  for  its  rude  nobility  of 
style.  As  Schlegel  left  the  matter  in  his  lectures,  there  was 
nothing  to  which  one  could  raise  an  objection  ;  and  the  same 
is  true  of  a  temperate  statement,  made  by  Wilhelm  von  Hum- 

1  "  Nicht  jeder  versteht  Poesie  zu  wittern,"  is  a  remark  of  his  still  in  some 
need  of  emphasis,  Lectures  {IVeudrttck),  III.  141. 

2  "  We  shall  treat  first  the  poetry  of  nature,  and  then  the  poetry  of  art.  We 
shall  follow  this  development  historically."  .  .  .    Lectures  (^Neudruck,  etc.),  I.  25  f. 


THE  TWO  ELEMENTS  IN  POETRY        133 

boldt,^  which  may  be  quoted  here  at  length.  "  In  the  course 
of  human  development,"  he  says,  "  there  arise  two  distinct 
kinds  of  poetry,  marked  respectively  by  the  presence  and 
the  absence  of  written  records.  One,  the  earlier,  may  be 
called  natural  poetry ;  it  springs  from  an  enthusiasm  which 
lacks  the  purpose  and  consciousness  of  art.  The  second  is  a 
later  product,  and  is  full  of  art ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  out- 
come of  the  deepest  and  purest  spirit  of  poetry."  One  sees 
it  is  not  the  communal  bantling  that  has  to  be  praised 
and  defended  here ;  not  rude,  uncivil  verse  that  once  found 
an  advocate  in  Herder,  but  now  needs  no  advocate ;  it  is  the 
poetry  of  art  that  must  be  lauded  and  protected  as  even- 
christian  with  "  natural  "  verse.  Democratic  ideas  had  put 
the  poetry  of  nature  above  all  else ;  the  pantheistic  doctrines 
of  Schelling,  carrying  even  Schlegel  off  his  feet,  had  made  a 
school  for  the  universal,  general,  communal,  absolute,  in 
verse  ;  and  a  wholesome  reaction  had  set  in.  Humboldt's 
modest  words  could  have  been  signed  by  nearly  every  critical 
warrior,  Trojan  or  Tyrian,  who  took  up  his  pen  in  the  long 
dispute  ;  the  trouble  had  begun  when  scholars  tried  to  give 
details  about  the  origin  of  natural  or  popular  verse  and 
essayed  to  draw  close  lines  of  definition  between  the  people 
and  the  artist.  Jacob  and  Wilhelm  Grimm,  full  of  romance, 
piety,  and  pantheism,  laid  stress  upon  this  kindly  word 
"  natural  "  and  dogmatized  it  into  a  creed.^  A  song  sings 
itself  ;  a  "folk  "  can  be  poet ;  nations  make  their  own  epic  ; 
the  process  is  a  mystery :  these  and  like  phrases  are  now 
regarded  by  short-sighted  critics  as  a  fair  summary  of  the 
democratic  or  communal  doctrine  of  poetry,  and  are  thought 
to  have  been  blown  into  space,  along  with  the  doctrine,  by  a 
clumsy  jest  of  Scherer  about  the  Pentecost.     Scherer,  indeed, 

1  Verschiedenheit  des  menschlichen  Sprachbaues,  a  part  of  the  introduction  to 
his  researches  on  the  Kawi  language,  §  20,  IVerke,  VI.  249. 

2  See  the  introduction  to  the  author's  Old  English  Ballads. 


134  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

has  given  a  history  of  this  movement,  with  what  seems  to 
him  a  closing  of  the  account,  in  his  admirable  book  on  Jacob 
Grimm  ;  but  neither  this  nor  his  jest  can  be  regarded  as  final. 
He  appeals  to  Schlegel  as  the  great  Hterary  critic  who  really 
killed  this  doctrine  of  the  folk  in  verse  as  soon  as  it  was  born, 
although  the  great  reputation  of  the  Grimms  gave  it  an  appear- 
ance of  life  and  vigour  down  to  the  time  say  ...  of  Scherer. 
Now  it  is  a  fact,  overlooked  by  German  scholars,  that  A.  W. 
Schlegel  laid  down  a  theory  of  communal  origins,  almost 
identical  with  that  of  the  Grimms,  at  a  time  when  Jacob  was 
barely  fifteen  and  Wilhelm  fourteen  years  old.  In  an  essay 
on  Biirger,^  whom  he  loved  and  admired,  Schlegel  asks 
whether  this  man  of  genius  was  really  what  he  thought  he 
was,  a  poet  of  the  folk,  and  whether  his  poetry  could  be 
called  poetry  of  the  people.  To  answer  the  question, 
Schlegel  makes  a  study  of  old  ballads,  and  says  that  these 
were  not  purposely  made  for  the  folk,  but  were  composed 
among  the  people,  — "  composed,  in  a  manner  of  speaking, 
by  the  folk  itself  as  a  ivhole.'"^  This  community  which 
made  the  old  ballads  was  of  course  homogeneous ;  the 
style  of  them  is  without  art  or  rhetoric ;  they  come  spon- 
taneously. In  short,  "the  free  poetic  impulse  did  that 
with  ease  and  success  to  which  the  careful  artist  now  pur- 
posely returns."  Here  is  the  later  doctrine  of  Jacob  and 
Wilhelm  Grimm  in  a  nutshell;  how  much  of  it  did  Schlegel 
reject  fifteen  years  later  in  that  famous  criticism^  of  the 
Grimms'  Old  Gernian  Forests,  where  he  turns  state's  evi- 
dence against  his  fellow  conspirators  for  demos }  Simply  its 
extravagances,  but  by  no  means  its  reiteration  of  a  dualism 
in  the  poetic  product  springing  from  conditions  of  production. 

1  A.  \V.  Schlegel,    Werke,  ed.  Docking,  VIII.  64  ff.,  written   in    1800.     See 
particularly  pp.  79  f. 

2  "  Deren  Dichter  gewissermassen  das  Volk  im  ganzen  war." 

3  Reprinted,  Werke,  XII.  383  ff.,  from  the  Heidelber^er  Jahrbuchtr  of  1815. 


THE  TWO  ELEMENTS  IN  POETRY        135 

That  idea  stands  intact;  for  all  of  Schlegel's  historical 
studies  are  based  upon  it.  Moreover,  the  Grimms  said  far 
more  than  Schlegel  had  said,  and  went  into  deeper  extrava- 
gances of  romance.  He  denied  their  assumption  that  the  great 
mass  of  legend,  song,  epic,  which  one  finds  or  surmises  at  the 
beginnings  of  a  national  hterature,  is  the  authoritative  and 
essentially  true  deliverance  of  the  nation  itself.  Nor  is  there 
a  pious  mystery  —  and  here  Schlegel  touches  the  quick  —  in 
the  making  of  such  songs.  A  poem  impHes  a  poet.  In 
brief,  the  Grimms  were  not  to  furbish  up  the  idyll  of  a  golden 
age,  bind  it  in  a  mystery,  and  hand  it  over  to  the  public  as 
an  outcome  of  exact  philological  studies.  This  process,  he 
said  in  sum,  is  all  theory  and  no  fact ;  and  here  lies  the 
stress  of  Schlegel's  criticism,  which  really  involved  only  a 
partial  and  superficial  recanting  of  his  own  doctrine.  He 
was  always  wont  to  turn  from  theory  to  fact,  and  in  the 
Grimms'  wild  theory  he  found  no  facts  at  all ;  he  protests 
against  the  self-made  song,  the  folk-made  song  even  ;  but  he 
would  have  been  the  first  to  give  ear  to  any  plea  for  a  differ- 
ence between  songs  of  art  and  songs  of  the  people  that  was 
based  on  facts  and  that  might  bring  out  those  social  conditions 
which  determine  the  poem  as  it  is  made.  He  had  himself 
repeatedly  brought  out  these  conditions,  these  facts,  and  he 
nowhere  recants  the  doctrine  which  he  founded  on  them. 
He  unsays,  perhaps  without  consciousness  of  any  change  of 
opinion,  his  old  saying  about  the  folk  as  a  poet ;  he  does  not 
unsay  his  belief  in  the  duaHsm  of  poetry  according  to  the 
conditions  under  which  it  is  produced.  "All  poetry,"  he  de- 
clares, "  rests  on  a  union  of  nature  and  art ;  without  art  it 
can  get  no  permanent  form,  without  nature  its  vitality  is  gone." 
True  ;  but  there  is  communal  art  and  there  is  individual  art,  or 
rather  there  are  two  kinds  of  poetry  according  as  art  and  the 
individual  or  instinct  and  the  community  predominate;  and 
this  dualism  he  had  repeatedly  affirmed,  just  as  Aristotle  had 


136  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

hinted  it  long  before  him.  Schlegel  does  not  reduce  it  to  a 
mere  matter  of  record/  as  modern  critics  do  when  they  seize 
upon  Humboldt's  saying  that  the  difference  between  oral  and 
written  is  the  "  mark  "  of  the  duaHsm  —  he  does  not  say  its 
essence ;  for  it  is  treated,  even  in  this  critical  essay,  as  a 
matter  of  conditions  of  production.  The  scholar  who  took 
up  poetry  on  the  genetic  and  historical  side,  who  followed 
brutish  and  uncivil  man  slowly  tottering  into  the  path  of  art, 
is  not  lost  in  the  critic  who  simply  refuses  to  see  primitive 
poetry  bursting  by  miracle  out  of  a  whole  nation  into  an  Iliad, 
a  Nibelungen  Lay,  a  Beowulf. 

This,  then,  is  particularly  to  be  borne  in  mind ;  the  dual- 
ism of  the  poetic  product  based  on  the  difference  between 
communal  and  individual  conditions  of  production  does  not 
rise  and  fall  with  the  dualism  as  it  took  shape  in  the  theory 
of  the  Grimms.^  Aristotle  had  set  aside  all  unpremeditated, 
artless  verse  of  the  throng,  and  had  regarded  it  at  best  as 
mere  foundation,  no  part  of  the  poetic  structure.  Jacob 
Grimm  went  to  the  other  extreme,  and  set  off  from  poetry 
all  laboured,  premeditated,  individual  verse;  he  accepted 
modern  poetry,  to  be  sure,  but  explained  away  the  poet ; 
the  superstructure  was  nothing  save  as  it  implied  that  un- 
seen foundation.  Or,  to  put  it  in  different  phrase,  the  old 
doctrine  of  imitation  as  mainspring  of  poetry  had  yielded  to 
the  idea  of  a  power,  an  informing  energy ;  one  turned,  like 
Addison,  to  the  imaginative  process,  or  else  to  deeper 
sources.      Herder  told   men  to  seek  this  source,  this  poetic 

1  Oral  and  communal  literature,  it  is  almost  superfluous  to  point  out,  are  not 
one  and  the  same  thing.  See  Max  Miiller  on  "  Literature  before  Letters,"  Nine- 
teenth Century,  November,  1899,  pp.  798  f. 

2  Such  an  assumption  takes  most  of  the  value  from  Berger's  detailed  account 
of  the  controversy  over  popular  song,  "  Volksdichtung  und  Kunstdichtung,"  Nord 
unci  Sild,  LXVIII.  (1894),  76  ff.,  an  account  which  is  often  inaccurate  and 
quite  incomplete.  Berger's  conclusion  that  there  is  no  essential  difference 
between  poetry  of  the  people  and  poetry  of  art  confuses,  as  is  usual  in  this  school 
of  Germans,  the  poetic  impulse  with  the  poetic  product. 


THE   TWO   ELEMENTS   IN   POETRY  137 

power,  in  the  people,  with  their  primitive  passions  and  their 
unspoiled  utterance.  Herder  was  general,  often  merely  neg- 
ative, and  exhorted ;  the  Grimms  were  positive  and  dogma- 
tized, teaching  that  the  whole  people  as  a  whole  people  once 
made  poetry.  But  this  extravagance  must  not  drag  down  in 
its  death  those  sober  facts  about  which  criticism  has  always 
hovered  with  its  hints  or  statements  of  the  twofold  nature  of 
poetry.  Moreover,  just  as  these  facts  are  to  be  held  in  plain 
view,  and  not  lost  in  the  haze  of  an  impossible  theory,  so,  too, 
they  are  not  to  be  rationalized  and  explained  away  into  a 
facile,  unmeaning  phrase  about  the  difference  between  oral 
and  written  record.  It  is  a  question  of  the  difference  in 
poetic  production  due  to  varying  conditions  under  which  the 
poetic  impulse  has  to  work  ;  and  some  difference  of  this  sort, 
not  of  mere  record,  is  recognized  in  the  whole  range  of  criti- 
cism, mostly,  however,  by  expressions  about  art  and  nature 
which  leave  much  to  be  desired  in  the  way  of  precise  state- 
ment. Nature  and  art  are  terms  of  aesthetics ;  even  when 
used  in  a  more  or  less  historical  sense,  the  historical  compre- 
hension of  them  is  uncertain ;  can  they  not  be  transferred 
then,  to  terms  of  sociology,  of  ethnology,  of  Hterary  condi- 
tions, so  as  to  correspond  with  the  actual  facts  of  poetry  and 
with  the  actual  history  of  man, —  transferred  in  good  faith, 
and  for  the  interests  of  no  theory,  but  to  provide  clear  tests 
for  an  investigation  which  studies  communal  poetry  in  order 
to  determine  whether  it  can  throw  light  upon  the  conditions 
of  primitive  song  ?  There  is  certainly  such  a  dualism  of 
conditions  apart  from  the  record.  Even  the  most  intrepid 
monist  allows  the  dualism  of  the  term  "  mankind  "  according 
as  one  takes  man  social  or  man  individual,  the  solitary  man 
of  reflection,  ethics,  judgment,  and  the  same  man  as  one  of  a 
crowd  of  madmen  —  mad  for  the  nonce,  mad  gregariously, 
but  mad.  M.  Tarde  has  recently  drawn  this  picture  in  very 
bold  outlines.     There  are  two  men  in  the   juryman, —  the 


138  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

individual  and  the  juryman.  Does  this,  then,  hold  in  poetry? 
It  is  a  fact  that  poetry  made  by  a  throng,  or  made  in  a 
throng,  or  made  for  a  throng,  or  made  in  whatever  fashion 
but  finding  its  way,  as  favourite  expression,  to  a  throng  — 
and  every  theory  of  communal  verse  may  be  referred  to  one 
of  these  cases  —  is  a  quite  distinct  kind  of  poetry  from  that 
which  is  made  by  the  solitary  poet  for  the  solitary  reader. 
Nowadays  nearly  all  poetry  is  written  and  read,  but  once 
upon  a  time  nearly  all  poetry  was  sung  and  heard ;  a  very 
hasty  glance  at  this  antithesis  will  show  that  it  concerns  pro- 
duction at  least  as  much  as  it  concerns  the  record.  It  serves 
as  basis  for  the  division  of  poetry  into  one  class  where  the 
communal  spirit  and  environment  condition  the  actual  mak- 
ing, and  into  another  class  where  the  artist,  the  individual, 
has  upper  hand  from  the  start.^  It  sets  primitive  poetry,  at 
least  in  some  important  characteristics,  over  against  the  po- 
etry of  modern  times.  If,  then,  communal  poetry  still  exists 
in  survival ;  if  the  sense  of  literary  evolution,  the  facts  of  lit- 
erary evolution,  the  facts  of  ethnology,  the  conclusions  of 
sociology,  all  assert  that  primitive  poetry  was  communal 
rather  than  individual  in  the  conditions  of  its  making ;  then 
it  is  clear  that  a  study  of  the  survivals  ought  to  be  one  of  the 
best  ways  by  which  one  could  come  to  reasonably  sure  con- 
clusions about  poetry  of  the  prime. 

1  As  direct,  unqualified  fact.  One  is  dealing  here  with  no  phrases,  no  illustra- 
tions, such  as  the  editor  of  Brantome  employs  when  he  says  (preface  to  the  Fie 
(ies  Dames  Galantes,  p.  x),  "  dans  un  siecle,  il  y  a  deux  choses,  I'histoire  et  la 
comedie :  I'histoire,  c'est  le  peuple,  la  comedie,  c'est  I'homme." 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF    THE   POETRY 
OF   ART 

Nobody  will  deny  that  the  modern  man  does  more  think- 
ing and  less  singing  than  the  man,  say,  of  Shakspere's 
time ;  and  nobody  will  deny  that  thinking  needs  soUtude, 
while  singing  —  real,  hearty  singing  —  asks  the  throng  and  a 
refrain.  Thought,  M.  Anatole  France^  declares  in  his  viva- 
cious way,  "  thought  is  the  acid  which  dissolves  the  universe, 
and  if  all  men  fell  to  thinking  at  once,  the  world  would  cease 
to  be."  "Lonely  thinking,"  says  Nietzsche,  "  that  is  wise; 
lonely  singing,  —  stupid."  In  the  same  fashion,  a  solitary 
habit  of  thinking  has  made  itself  master  of  poetry,  particu- 
larly of  the  lyric ;  while  the  singing  of  a  poem  is  going  fast 
out  of  date.  Poetry  begins  with  the  impersonal,  with  com- 
munal emotion,  and  passes  to  a  personal  note  of  thought 
so  acutely  individual  that  it  has  to  disguise  itself,  wear 
masks,  and  prate  about  being  objective.  For  objective  and 
even  simple  poetry  may  be  highly  subjective  at  heart;  and 
to  define  subjective  as  talking  about  one's  self,  what  Bagehot, 
in  his  essay  on  Hartley  Coleridge,  calls  self-delineation,  is 
by  no  means  a  sufficient  account  of  the  trait.  When  the 
folksong  runs :  — 

A  Nant's,  k  Nant's  est  arriv^, 
Saute,  blonde,  et  leve  le  pied, 
Trois  beaux  navir's  charges  de  bl^ ; 
Saute,  blonde,  ma  Jolt'  blonde.  .  .  , 

1  La  Vie  Litter  aire,  II.  173. 
139 


I40  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

and  B6ranger  sings  :  — 

Une  plainte  touchante 
De  ma  bouche  sortit ; 
Le  bon  Dieu  me  dit,  Chante, 
Chante,  pauvre  petit ! 

it  is  not  only  wrong  to  take  simplicity  as  the  differencing 
factor  of  the  communal  song,  for  Beranger  is  quite  as  simple, 
but  it  will  not  do  to  fall  back  on  mere  self-delineation  as  end 
of  the  matter  in  art.  Half  of  the  folksongs  of  Europe  are 
self-delineations  of  the  singing  and  dancing  crowd,  in  mass 
or  by  deputed  "  I."  The  real  difference  lies  in  the  shifting 
of  the  point  of  view ;  song,  once  the  consolation  and  expres- 
sion of  the  festal  crowd,  comes  to  be  the  consolation  and 
expression  of  the  solitary  poet.  "  I  do  not  inquire,"  Ribot 
remarks,^  "  whether  this  sort  of  isolation  in  an  ivory  tower 
is  a  gain  or  a  loss  for  poetry ;  but  I  observe  its  growing 
frequency  as  civiHzation  advances,  the  complete  antithesis 
to  its  collective  character  in  the  earliest  ages."  To  study 
such  a  change  in  the  long  reaches  of  poetic  progress  would 
be  an  almost  impossible  task  even  if  the  material  were  at 
hand ;  it  is  best  to  take  a  comparatively  short  range  of  time 
and  a  definite  place,  —  say  the  literature  of  modern  Europe 
from  its  beginning  in  the  Middle  Ages  down  to  the  present 
time.  The  extremes  are  fairly  sundered.  Europe  had  lapsed 
from  civilization  to  a  half  barbarous  state,  from  the  height 
of  the  Roman  empire  to  the  depth  of  the  dark  ages,  with  a 
corresponding  decline  of  intellectual  power  and  a  great 
inrush  of  communal  force.  Out  of  these  communal  con- 
ditions, individual  and  intellectual  vigour  made  its  difficult 
way ;  how  difficult,  how  tortuous  that  way,  every  one  knows ; 
and  it  is  along  this  route,  and  about  the  time  of  the  renais- 
sance, that  one  may  best  watch  the  differencing  elements 

^  Work  quoted,  p.  340. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  141 

of  artistic  and  individual  poetry  as  they  come  slowly  into 
view. 

As  the  individual  ^  frees  himself  from  the  clogs  of  his 
mediaeval  guild,  in  literature  as  in  life,  there  begins  the  dis- 
tinctly modern  idea  of  fame,  of  glory,  as  a  personal  achieve- 
ment apart  from  community  or  state ;  and  there,  too,  begins 
the  idea  of  literary  property.  Fame  of  the  poet  had  its 
classical  tradition,  and  was  asserted  in  a  conventional,  mean- 
ingless way  by  mediaeval  poets,  chiefly  in  Latin ;  but  the 
market  value  of  a  poem  is  something  new.^  From  this  time 
on  there  is  a  pathetic  struggle  in  the  poet's  mind  whether 
he  shall  regard  his  poem  as  offspring  to  cherish  or  as  ware 
to  sell.  Randolph,  writing  to  his  friend,  Master  Anthony 
Stafford,  takes  the  nobler  view :  — 

Let  clowns  get  wealth  and  heirs  :  when  I  am  gone  .  .  . 
If  I  a  poem  leave,  that  poem  is  my  son. 

There  is  pretty  antithesis,  too,  between  the  director  and  the 
poet  in  Goethe's  play  before  the  play  in  Faust,  —  one  for 
his  box-receipts,  and  the  other  for  the  solitudes  of  poetry  and 
the  gods.  A  happy  solution  has  been  found  of  late  for  this 
dilemma ;  over  the  naked  contradiction  of  love  and  merchan- 
dise one  throws  the  cloak  of  the  artist.  The  artist  begets 
in  pure  love  of  his  art ;  and  he  sells  for  Falstaff's  reason,  — 
it  is  his  vocation.  Until  poetry  got  this  market  value,  how- 
ever, it  was  common  goods  ;  poets  had  written  generically, 

^  For  the  psychological  study  of  individuality  in  art  and  letters,  see  Dilthey, 
"  Beitrage  zum  Studium  der  Individualitat,"  Sitzuiigsberichte,  Berlin  Academy, 
1896,  I.  295  ff.  For  a  historical  study,  with  sociological  leanings,  see  the  admi- 
rable work  of  Burckhardt,  Ctiltur  der  Renaissance  in  lialien,  ed.  1898,  I.  143  ff. 
("der  Mensch  wird  geistiges  Individuum  "),  154  f.,  178;  II.  29  f.,  48;  and  Bru- 
netiere,  involution  des  Genres,  pp.  39,  167  (Rousseau  and  individualism),  and 
N'ouveaux  Essais,  pp.  66,  150,  194. 

-  If  one  had  the  materials,  a  similar  emancipation  of  the  poet  could  be  noted 
in  Latin,  beginning,  perhaps,  with  Ennius  —  voli/o  vivus  per  era  virunt  —  and 
Naevius,  down  to  Horace,  his  fountain  made  famous  »ie  dicente,  and  the  non 
omnis  moriar. 


142  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

as  members  of  a  class  or  guild,^  and  any  member  might  use 
the  common  stock  of  expressions  and  ideas.  A  translator 
was  as  great  as  his  original.^  The  eighth  chapter  of  Dante's 
essay  on  composition  in  the  vernacular  opens  with  a  curious 
discourse  about  artistic  property,  as  if  the  new  idea  and  the 
new  phrase  needed  a  gloss.  "When  we  say,  'this  is  Peter's 
canzone,'  we  mean  that  Peter  made  it,  not  merely  that  he 
uttered  it !  "  Such  an  explanation,  however,  seems  timely 
enough  if  one  remembers  that  "  a  mediaeval  writer  held  it 
to  be  improper  to  join  his  name  to  any  literary  composition,"  ^ 
and  that  Dante,  "  first  of  the  moderns  "  as  he  is,  and  per- 
sonal as  his  work  seems  to  be,  actually  names  himself  but 
once  in  the  whole  Commedia.  Here  is  the  dying  struggle 
of  that  clan  ownership*  which  had  ruled  from  the  days  of 
the  primitive  horde ;  for  it  is  clear  that  intellectual  property 
would  be  the  last  kind  to  be  developed,  and  even  if  the  poet 
liked  to  see  his  name  graven  on  the  colder  side  of  the  rock, 
this  was  not  an  isolated,  personal  distinction,  but  was  merged 
in  the  register  of  the  guild  like  the  names  on  a  soldiers' 
monument.  Horace's  "  write  me  down  among  the  lyric 
poets"  was  an  intelhgible  ambition  to  mediaeval  minds;  but 
the  purely  personal  triumph  of  his  7ion  omnis  moriar  and  its 
splendid  context  was  alien  to  their  way  of  thought.  Barring 
the  degree  of  genius  in  each,  one  may  say  that  Dante  and 
Victor  Hugo  were  equally  strong  in  their  intense  individu- 
ality ;  here  is  a  case  where  Gautier's  phrase  holds  good  that 
the  brain  of  an  artist  was  the  same  under  the  Pharaohs  as 
it  is  now ;  yet  that  conditions  change  the   product,  that  the 

1  Vossler,  Poethche  Theorien  in  der  italienischen  Fri'ihrenaissance,  Berlin, 
1900,  p.  3:  "  Im  Mittelalter  haUe  jede  Gesellschaftsklasse  ihren  eigenen  ziinfti- 
gen  Sanger  {rimatore  oder  dicitore  per  rima),  der  nur  von  ihr  verstanden  und 
anerkannt  wurde." 

2  Lounsbury,  Chaucer,  III.  14. 

8  Nyrop,  Den  oldfranske  Heltedigtning,  p.  288. 

*  On  the  individual  poet  as  mouthpiece  of  the  clan,  see  Posnett,  Comp.  Lit., 
pp.  130  ff.,  and  Lctuurneau,  Evolution  Liiteraire,  p.  78. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  143 

individual  note,  piercing  in  the  modern,  becomes  almost 
communal  and  generic  in  the  older  poet,  that  a  distinct  curve 
of  evolution  to  the  personal  extreme,  even  in  artistic  poetry, 
can  be  drawn  between  them,  is  clear  to  probation  for  any 
one  who  will  compare  two  famous  passages  which  a  hasty 
inference  would  probably  declare  to  be  on  the  same  straight 
individual  line.  If  one  looks  at  the  whole  passage  where 
Dante  speaks  of  his  poetic  achievement,^  and  if  one  neither 
isolates  a  phrase  nor  yet  sentimentalizes  it  all  to  suit  modern 
ideas ;  if  one  notes  the  satisfaction  which  the  poet  feels  with 
his  work  in  and  for  the  guild,  and  how  he  passes  the  time 
of  day  with  a  brother  craftsman ;  then  one  will  find  in  it 
not  only  a  touch  of  artlessness,  of  what  is  called,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  the  mediaeval,  the  communal,  but  an  effacement 
of  personality  in  the  very  act  of  asserting  it.  He  shows, 
as  it  were,  his  diploma  from  the  guild  of  poets.  To  bring 
this  artlessness  into  clear  relief,  one  has  only  to  compare  the 
thirty-second  of  Hugo's  Chants  du  Crepuscule,  where  the  poet, 
alone  in  an  old  tower,  addresses  the  bell  which  hangs  there, 
its  pious  inscription  insulted  by  the  obscenities,  blasphemies, 
and  futilities  written  over  it ;  he  is  no  exile,  this  poet,  but 
proudly  and  contemptuously  isolated  from  his  kind,  whose 
brutishness  he  has  just  deplored;  and  he  speaks  thus  to  the 
bell,  —  of  all  survivals  the  most  characteristic  of  mediaeval 
thought,  the  veriest  symbol  of  communal  religious  life :  — 

Sens-tu,  par  cette  instinct  vague  et  plein  de  douceur. 

Qui  reveie  toujours  une  soeur  k  la  sceur, 

Qu'k  cette  heure  ou  s'endort  la  soiree  expirante,^ 

^  Purgat.,  xxiv.  52  ff. :  — 

lo  mi  son  un  che  quando 
Amor  mi  spira,  noto,  ed  a  quel  modo 
Che  ditta  dentro,  vo  significando. 

But  it  must  be  read  with  what  precedes  and  what  follows. 

2  It  is  almost  impertinent  to  remind  the  reader  of  Dante's  famous  verses, 
Purgat.,  viii.  i  ff.  Perhaps  Hugo  remembers  his  Dante  here.  Compare 
Section  iv.  of  this  same  Chant. 


144  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Utie  dme  est  pr^s  de  toi,  non  tnoins  que  toi  vibrante, 
Qui  bien  souvent  aussi  jette  un  bruit  solennel, 
Et  se  plaint  dans  Tamour  comme  toi  dans  le  del  ? 

Then  the  superb  Hnes  of  comparison  :  life  has  written  on 
the  poet's  soul  base  and  irreverent  inscriptions,  like  those  on 
the  bell ;  but  a  touch  of  the  divine,  a  message,  and  like  the 
bell,  so  his  soul  breaks  out  into  harmonies  in  which  even  the 
audacities  and  futilities  perforce  take  part.  Compare  all  this 
introspection,  this  immense  assumption  of  individual  impor- 
tance, with  the  objective,  communal  tone  of  Dante,  despite 
that  "I  am  one  who  sings  whenever  love  inspires  me,"  —  so 
like  Hugo's  assertion,  and  yet  so  different.  In  each  of  these 
passages  one  can  see  artistic  individuality ;  but  between  them 
stretches  a  long  chain  of  development  in  which  each  link  is 
a  new  emphasis  on  the  individual  in  art.  One  of  the  earliest 
and  strongest  of  these  hnks  was  forged  by  the  renaissance ; 
although  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Dante  represents  not 
simply  his  guild  of  singers,  but  behind  them  a  singing  com- 
munity of  peasants,  the  songs  of  field,  spinning-room,  and 
village  dance,  still  dominant  among  unlettered  folk  and  not 
yet  shamed  into  silence  by  print  and  the  schoolmaster. 

The  change,  however,  was  there ;  the  tide  had  turned 
against  communal  sentiment,  and  individuals  were  feeling  a 
new  power.  Not  only  fame  and  glory  fled  from  the  guild  to 
the  great  man ;  individual  disgrace,  the  lapse,  the  shortcom- 
ing, find  a  record.  Once  the  flyting  was  carried  out  before 
the  folk,  rose  and  fell  with  the  occasion,  and  was  a  thing  of 
festal  origin,  like  the  Eskimo  poem-duel,  or  the  earliest  amoe- 
bean  verse,  or  the  German  scJinadcrJiilpJl ;  but  Aretino  now 
appears  as  the  father  of  journalism  in  our  pleasant  modern 
sense,  as  the  arch  reporter,  the  discoverer  and  publisher  of 
personal  scandal.^     In   painting,  too,  one  notes  the  sudden 

1  The  emancipation  of  woman  as  an  individual  begins  here  in  Italy.  See 
M.  de  Vogue's  study  of  the  Sforza  (in  llistoire  et  Poesie),  and  the  general  state- 
ment of  Hurckhardt,  Cult.  Ital.  Ren.,  I.  144,  note  3. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  145 

rage  for  portraits ;  and  it  is  the  portrait  of  the  individual  for 
himself,  not  simply  of  pope,  or  of  abbot,  or  of  prince,  as  the 
head  and  type  of  a  corporation,  although  a  trace  of  this  influ- 
ence lingers  in  the  setting  of  the  picture,  witness  one  of 
Holbein's  merchants,  with  his  bills,  pens,  memoranda,  and  a 
dozen  mercantile  suggestions  scattered  about  him.  Poetry,  of 
course,  felt  the  change  first  of  all,  both  in  subject-matter  and 
in  form.  For  the  latter,  there  is  the  founding  of  the  sonnet, 
that  apartment  for  a  single  gentleman  in  verse.  One  thinks 
at  once  of  Petrarch,  rightly  called  "  the  first  modern  man," 
and  deserving  the  title  better  than  Dante,  who  was  quite  as 
mediaeval  as  he  was  modern,^  while  Petrarch  belonged  to  the 
new  world ;  besides  his  sonnets,  his  correspondence  and  his 
confessions  show  that  he  not  only  felt  the  need,  as  none  of  his 
predecessors  had  felt  it,  to  reveal  and  analyze  his  personal- 
ity, but  also  recognized  an  interest  on  the  part  of  the  public 
to  which  these  revelations  could  respond.  The  mediaeval 
poet  sought  his  public,  did  not  call  the  public  to  himself ; 
and  the  artistic  form  of  his  poetry  is  the  utterance  of  com- 
mon feeling  in  a  common  and  often  conventional  phrase. 
The  May  morning,  the  vision,^  the  garden  and  the  roses  and 
the  blindingly  beautiful  young  person,  the  allegorical  birds 
and  beasts,  —  this  was  the  late  mediaeval  tether ;  although 
allegory  helped  the  poet  to  escape  the  throng  and  hedge  his 
personality  with  some  importance,  even  allegory  is  in  the 
service  if  not  of  the  throng,  at  least  of  the  guild.     Allegory 

1  "  Ego  velut  in  confinio  duorum  populorum  constitutus  simul  ante  retroque 
prospicio,"  a  saying  of  Petrarch,  would  apply  belter  to  Dante.  The  Vita  A'tcova 
has  psychological  analysis  enough  for  ten  moderns;  but  the  mediaeval  in  it  all 
conquers  the  modern,  as  one  feels  the  moment  one  turns  to  Petrarch's  corre- 
spondence. Perhaps  Norden,  Antike  Kunstprosa,  II.  732,  lays  too  much  stress 
on  Petrarch's  backward  gaze;  he  did  look  backward  to  the  classics,  but  he  was 
not  medineval.    See  the  charming  extracts  given  in  Robinson  and  Rolfe's  Petrarca. 

2  Hardly  borrowed  from  the  classics,  as  Gautier  hints  in  general,  and  asserts 
for  Old  French  epic.  See  Beneze,  Das  Traitmmotiv  in  der  t?thd.  Dichtung  bis 
12^0,  und  in  alten  deutschen   Volksliedern,  Halle,  1 897,  pp.  53  ff. 

L 


146  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

as  a  poetical  form  mediates  between  the  old  communal  ballad, 
or  the  chanson  de  gcste,  and  the  new  lyric  of  confidences. 
The  modern  poet  cut  loose  from  it  all,  and  cast  about  for  the 
gentle  reader,  soon  to  be  his  portion  by  the  happy  interven- 
tion of  print.  Ronsard  strikes  this  note  of  separation  from 
an  unappreciative  throng,  and  so  does  many  another  human- 
ist ;  while  Chaucer's  contempt  for  the  masses  is  not  so  much 
artistic  as  mediaeval  and  aristocratic.  Dunbar,  our  first  really 
modern  poet,  the  first  to  take  that  purely  individual  attitude, 
was  also  first  of  our  poets  to  see  his  work  in  printer's  ink. 
Even  when  the  form  of  literature  demanded  objective  treat- 
ment, the  interest  began  to  be  individual.  We  now  laud  our 
poet  or  playwright  for  the  fine  individuality  of  his  folk,  and 
flout  those  masterless  tales,  songs,  ballads,  where  even  the 
hero  is  a  mere  type,  or,  worse,  a  mere  doer  of  deeds.  This 
doer  of  deeds  answered  the  desire  for  poetic  expression  at  a 
time  when  an  individual  was  merged  in  his  clan ;  the  excess 
of  interest  in  action  is  proportioned  to  the  excess  of  com- 
munal over  individual  importance.  As  the  artist  develops, 
as  he  begins  to  feel  his  way  toward  individualism,  his  genius 
is  spent  first  upon  allegory,  and  then,  as  real  life  grows  more 
imperious,  upon  the  type,  a  compromise  between  individual 
and  community.  Here  stands  Chaucer.  Like  Dante  he 
looks  both  ways ;  his  squire,  for  example,  deliciously  clear 
and  individual  as  he  seems,  has  as  much  reminiscence  of 
Childe  Waters  as  prophecy  of  Romeo.  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  two  periods  in  which  Chaucer  and  Shakspere  respectively 
worked,  that  while  one  named  his  masterpiece,  the  study  of 
a  vulgar  woman,  "  a  wife  of  Bath,"  the  other  called  a  like 
masterpiece  "Mrs.  Quickly  of  Eastcheap,"  —  a  very  pretty 
little  curve  of  evolution  in  itself;  and  when  the  portrait  of 
the  merchant  is  drawn,  —  and  what  a  portrait !  —  that  care- 
less "  sooth  to  sayn,  I  noot  how  men  hym  calle,"  as  com- 
pared with  Shakspere's  treatment  of  Antonio,  is  suggestive 


THE    DIFFERENCING    ELEMENTS    OF   ART  147 

not  only  of  the  aristocrat,  but  also  of  the  mediaeval  point  of 
view.  Even  the  setting  of  the  Prologue  is  in  point, — these 
pilgrims,  each  a  representative  of  his  class  or  corporation, 
their  common  lodging,  their  association,  even  if  temporary,  as 
in  a  guild,  their  jests,  courtesies,  and  quarrels,  all  in  the  open 
air.  A  century  later,  people  had  come  indoors.  Professor 
Patten,^  alert  to  note  the  connection  between  aesthetic  change 
and  a  change  in  economic  conditions,  points  out  the  altera- 
tion thus  wrought  in  the  passage  from  communal  to  individ- 
ual life.  Window-glass,  the  chimney,  bricks,  all  improve- 
ments of  the  home,  changed  this  home  from  a  prison  to  a 
palace,  from  something  shunned  and  undesired  to  the  focal 
point  of  happiness.  Outdoor  communal  amusements  yielded 
to  indoor  pleasures  shared  by  a  few.  The  dances  and  the 
license  of  May-day,  uproarious  and  often  questionable  re- 
joicings once  common  to  all,  were  now  left  to  the  baser 
sort,  while  quiet,  reputable  folk  turned  to  their  homes. 
Knight  and  prioress,  too,  no  longer  rode  beside  the  miller 
and  put  up  with  his  gros  rire,  his  drunken  antics,  and  his 
tale. 

The  main  expression  in  poetry  brought  about  by  that  new 
power  of  the  individual  is  the  confidential  note,  the  assump- 
tion of  a  reader's  interest  in  the  poet's  experience,  what  J.  A. 
Symonds  called  "  the  lyric  cry,"  begetting  on  the  part  of  this 
reader  or  hearer  a  sense  at  first  confined  to  such  mutual  rela- 
tions of  the  poet  and  the  sympathetic  soul  to  which  he  spoke, 
but  spreading  little  by  Httle  until  it  is  now  fairly  to  be  called 
the  medium,  the  atmosphere,  of  poetry  at  large ;  one  names 
it  sentiment.  The  history  of  modern  verse,  with  epic  and 
drama  in  decay,  is  mainly  the  history  of  lyrical  sentiment. 
Where  does  this  first  appear  in  European  poetry  P^    Answers 

1  Development  of  English  Thought,  pp.  81  f. 

2  Deor's  song,  first  in  point  of  time  of  English  lyrics,  is  a  vox  clamantis  in 
deserto.     The  breezy  personality  of  it,  the  individual  confidence,  the  appeal  to 


148  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

to  such  a  question  are  made  with  melancholy  forebodings, 
seeing  that  a  first  appearance  in  literary  annals  is  as  unstable 
as  the  positively  last  appearance  of  a  favourite  singer ;  but 
French  criticism  has  pitched,  with  considerable  show  of  right, 
upon  that  amiable  vagabond,  Villon.  Certainly  the  Grand 
Testament  is  as  familiar  in  its  tone  to  the  modern  reader  as  it 
is  difficult  and  obsolete  in  its  speech ;  and  Sainte-Beuve,  in  a 
pretty  bit  of  criticism,  has  undertaken  to  show  why  Villon's 
most  famous  ballade  touches  this  modern  sense,  while  verses 
seemingly  like  it  are  scorned  as  monkish  prattle.^  Through- 
out the  Middle  Ages  a  favourite  form  of  communal  sentiment, 
or  rather  of  theological  and  professional  reflection,  was  to 
ask  where  this  and  that  famous  person  might  now  be  found. 
The  mediaeval  poet  could  string  together  interminable  rimed 
queries  hke  these  of  St.  Bernard  :  — 

Die  ubi  Salomon,  olim  tam  nobilis? 
Vel  ubi  Samson  est,  dux  invincibilis? 
Vel  pulcher  Absolon,  vultu  mirabilis? 
Vel  dulcis  Jonathas,  multum  amabilis  ? 

and  so  on,  with  pagans  like  Caesar,  Tully,  Aristotle.  A 
capable  Frenchman  traced  this  sort  of  poem  far  back,  and 
on  his  heels  came  a  tireless,  not  to  say  superfluous,  German ;  ^ 
but  it  was  Sainte-Beuve  who  did  the  one  important  thing. 
He  sees  in  Villon's  queries  about  those  fair  ladies  dead  and 
gone  little  more  than  the  old  conventional  question,  and  finds 
Villon's  originality  in  the  exquisite  refrain,  with  its  light,  half- 
great  names  and  great  things  to  prop  Master  Deor's  own  hope  that  something 
good  will  turn  up,  —  all  this  is  discouragement  to  the  critic  who  likes  to  go  about 
pasting  labels  on  various  epochs  of  literature.  But  there  is  Deor's  rival,  WtdstS, 
the  typical  singer  lost  in  the  guild,  or  rather  a  dozen  singers  rolled  into  one,  — 
communal  triumph. 

1  Causeries  du  Liindi,  XIV.  296  f.  Learned  research  on  the  ubi  sunt  formula 
is  noted  by  Professor  Bright,  Modern  Language  Notes,  1893,  Col.  187. 

2  Classical  parallels  go  for  little  here;  changes  rung  upon  the  memento  mori, 
like  Horace's  quo  pater  yEneas,a.  statement,  are  not  in  line  with  these  medixnal 
queries. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  149 

mocking  pathos :  But  where  are  the  snows  of  yester  year  f 
The  Latin  simply  failed  to  add  :  — 

Ast  ubi  nix  vetus,  tarn  effusibilis  ? 

Yet  Sainte-Beuve  did  not  quite  touch  the  quick.  Even  this 
refrain  is  no  more  original  than  the  queries ;  for  it  not  only- 
echoes  a  popular  phrase,  and  perhaps  is  itself  nothing  more 
than  a  communal  refrain,^  but  it  continues  a  theme  of  the 
mediaeval  poet  even  better  known  than  the  tibi  sunt.  The 
real  change  is  not  in  words  or  phrase,  but  in  a  shifting  from 
the  professional  to  the  personal  point  of  view.  The  poet  of 
the  sacred  guild  could  put  this  fact  of  mortality  either  as  a 
question  or  as  an  "example,"  —  witness  a  thirteenth-century 
poem,2  where  the  prospect  of  dissolution  is  fortified  by  the 
roasting  of  St.  Lawrence,  the  beheading  of  John  the  Baptist, 
and  the  stabbing  of  Thomas  a  Becket ;  while  the  same  manu- 
script which  holds  this  "  example "  has  a  charming  little 
poem  of  questions,  the  L7ive  Ron  of  Thomas  de  Hales, 
often  quoted  as  forerunner  of  Villon's  ballade.  "  A  maid 
of  Christ,"  —  and  we  note  this  touch  of  the  guild,  —  "asks 
me  to  make  her  a  love-song.  I  will  do  it.  But  the  love  of 
this  world  is  a  cheat ;  lovers  must  die,  and  men  fade  all  as 
leaf  from  bough.  Lovers,  quotha .''  Where,  indeed,  are  Paris 
and  Helen  ;  where  Tristram,  Ysolde,  and  the  rest ;  where,  too, 
are  Hector  and  CcBsarf  As  if  they  had  never  lived  at  all!  " 
At  first  sight  this  lyric  of  the  guild  seems  a  counterpart  to 
the  pagan  cry  of  Villon,  as  if  the  latter  were  a  parody  of  the 
old   formula  without  the  piety  and  with  a  vague  touch  of 

^  Chaucer,  Troilus,  V.  1 1 74  ff . :  — 

From  hazel-wode,  ther  loly  Robin  pleyde, 
Shal  come  al  that  that  thou  abydest  here; 
Ye,  farewel  al  the  snow  of  feme  yere  ! 

Boccaccio  has  instead  an  allusion  to  the  "  wind  of  Etna."     Chaucer's  phrase  is 
"  a  reference  to  some  popular  song  or  saying,"  in  Skeat's  opinion. 
2  Printed  by  Morris,  Old  English  Miscellany,  pp.  no  ff. 


I50  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

genius  in  the  refrain  ;  but  the  difference  is  more  than  this. 
Villon  transfers  sentiment  from  the  guild  to  the  individual.^ 
It  is  a  supreme  and  triumphant  and  epoch-making  attempt 
to  do  what  the  individual  poet  had  always  essayed  to  do  and 
found  impossible,  —  to  leap  communal  barriers  entirely,  and 
tear  himself  free  from  the  guild.  The  monk  could  not  doff 
his  cowl ;  his  face  is  hidden ;  his  song  asks  the  organ,  the 
choir,  the  general  confession,  the  litany,  for  a  background, 
even  when  it  seems  fairly  Wordsworthian :  — 

Winter  wakens  all  my  care  ! 

Now  these  trees  are  waxing  bare, 

Oft  I  sigh  and  mourn  full  "sair," 

When  it  cometh  in  my  thought 

Of  this  earthly  joy,  how  it  all  goeth  to  naught.'' 

Not  so  with  Villon.     He  knows  no  guild,  save  that  of  the  jolly 
beggars ;  and  he  can  do  with  ease  what  even  Ronsard  does 
only  with  difficulty,  and  leaning  on  a  classical  staff :  — 
Sous  le  tombeau  tout  Ronsard  n'ira  pas,  — 

paraphrase  of  Horace.  But  these  ladies  pass  in  line  before 
Villon  for  his  own  whim  ;  ^  they  are  there  to  throw  a  more 
intense  light  upon  his  own  personality ;  and  the  cry  of  the 
refrain,  subtle  but  absolute  touch  of  individual  sentiment,  is 
the  new  lyric  cry.*  Across  the  channel  this  cry  is  echoed  in 
what  at  first  hearing  sounds  like  the  veriest  poem  of  a  guild, 

1  Not,  of  course,  merely  in  this  ballade.  Among  other  examples  of  the 
quality,  see  stanzas  28,  29,  38  ff.  of  the  Grand  Testa t?ient.  See  other  ballades; 
passages  in  the  Peiii  Testa?Hen( :  — 

"  Au  fort,  je  meurs  amant  martir," 
and  of  course  the  Regrets  de  la  Belle  Ileaulmiere. 

2  About  1300;  modernized,  of  course.  Compare  the  sweep  and  firm  individual 
control  of  Wordsworth's  Loud  is  the  Vale,  —  lines  on  the  expected  death  of  Fox. 

"  M.  Gaston  Paris,  Po'esie  du  Moyen  Age,  II.  232,  contrasts  Villon  with  Charles 
of  Orleans,  the  "  dernier  chanteur  du  moyen  age,"  while  the  other  is  "  premier 
poete  moderne,"  and  that  "par  le  libre  essor  de  I'individualisme."  .See  the 
rest  of  this  admirable  summary. 

*  The  Lorelei  legend  would  once  have  been  given  for  its  own  sake;  now  it  is 
merely  a  reason,  which  the  poet  imparts  to  his  reader,  "  dass  ich  so  traurig  bin." 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  151 

Dunbar's  La^nent  for  the  Poets^  and  in  its  refrain,  super- 
ficially so  mediaeval,  Timor  mortis  conturbat  me  !  But  for 
English  lyric,  Dunbar  is  the  first  poet  of  sentiment,  in  its 
modern  meaning,  as  Villon  is  for  the  French.  In  brief,  the 
more  one  studies  these  changes,  which  could  be  detailed  to  the 
limits  of  a  book,  the  clearer  one  sees  that  Europe  learned  from 
Villon,  Dunbar,  and  their  fellows,  to  take  sentiment^  instead 
of  the  old  morality,  and  to  regard  lyric  verse  as  the  bidding 
to  a  private  view  of  the  poet's  mind.  The  poet  now  makes 
himself  the  central  point  of  all  that  he  says  and  sees  ;  he  lays 
all  history,  all  romance,  under  tribute  to  support  the  burden 
of  his  own  fate  and  frame  his  proper  picture ;  he  is  the  sun 
of  the  system ;  he  serves  no  clan  or  guild,  and  admits  his 
readers  only  one  by  one  to  an  audience.  The  advance  from 
Villon's  time  is  chiefly  to  add  the  intellectual  to  the  individual, 
an  obvious  process.  Emotion  has  come  so  thoroughly  under 
individual  control  that  the  art  is  now  conscious  and  the  artist 
supreme,  and  so  thoroughly  under  intellectual  control  that  the 
feelings,  however  common  and  widely  human  their  appeal, 
must  own  the  mastery  of  thought.  The  one  involves  the 
other ;  for  consent  of  emotions  is  a  far  easier  affair  than  con- 
sent of  opinions  and  agreement  of  reasoning.  Emotion  is  the 
solvent  of  early  superstition,  traditional  beliefs  and  affections, 
in  a  community,  as  it  is  in  an  individual.  "I  felt,"  says  Rous- 
seau, "before  I  thought;  it  is  the  common  lot  of  humanity."^ 

1  Lament  for  the  Makaris  (dead  poets  for  dead  ladies),  quhen  he  wes  Seik, — 
a  significant  situation,  like  Tom  Nash  —  again  with  dead  lords  and  ladies  —  and 
his  "  I  am  sick,  I  must  die  :  Lord  have  mercy  on  us  1  "  For  the  imitation  of  Vil- 
lon by  Dunbar,  see  the  notes  by  Dr.  Gregor  in  Small's  edition  of  Dunbar's  Works. 

2  Mr.  Sidney  Lee  has  surely  gone  too  far  in  divorcing  sentiment  from  Eliza- 
bethan sonnets;  as  in  the  case  of  dance  and  ballad,  literary  bookkeeping  can  be 
overdone,  and  borrowing  may  too  easily  obscure  production. 

3  See  Ribot,  Psychol,  Eittot.,  p.  267,  on  arrested  development  of  emotion.  He 
allows,  by  the  way,  p.  vi.,  not  only  a  physiological  basis  of  emotion,  but,  pp.  7,  12, 
gives  autonomy  to  the  emotional  states,  and  allows  them  to  exist  independently 
of  intellectual  conditions. 


152  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

In  societies  custom  is  a  consent  of  instincts,  an  unconscious 
law ;  legislation,  definite  and  conscious,  is  a  consent  of  thinking 
individuals.  A  creed  has  always  been  easy  to  change,  for  it 
is  matter  of  thought ;  a  cult,  a  form,  a  superstition,  communal 
instincts,  in  a  word,  go  not  out  even  with  prayer  and  fasting. 
Objections  against  all  this  have  little  weight.  One  is  told 
that  the  renaissance  brought  uniformity  and  not  diversity  of 
poetic  form  and  thought.  But  that  rationalism,  so  called, 
which  then  came  in,  and  which  made  reason  superior  to  emo- 
tion, worked  for  the  individual  and  not,  as  critics  say,  for  the 
social  forces  in  art.^  It  is  true  that  all  this  rational  activity, 
this  intelligent  study  and  discussion  of  the  classics,  led  to  a 
certain  uniformity  in  poetic  work ;  but  every  advance  in 
rationalism  really  accents  the  individuality,  the  artistry,  the 
intellectual  power  of  the  poet,  and  leads  him  further  from  the 
communal  and  instinctive  emotional  level.  Keen  emotion 
brings  men  closer ;  keen  thinking  separates  their  paths,  even 
if  it  leads  them  to  one  destination.  Communal  emotion  is 
still  the  mine  whence  a  poet  gets  his  gold ;  but  where  the 
gold  was  once  current  in  mere  bulk,  or  at  best  in  weight,  it 
must  now  be  stamped  with  the  sharpest  possible  impression 
of  artistic  thought.  Or,  again,  one  may  be  more  precise  in 
one's  objection.  Attacking  this  idea  that  emotion,  or  the  mass, 
rules  in  one  age,  and  the  individual,  or  thought,  in  another,  as 
something  akin  to  Comte's  discredited  evolutionary  drama  in 
three  great  acts,  —  feeling,  fancy,  reason,  —  one  may  insist  on 
the  piercing  emotional  individualism  and  subtle  thinking  of 
the  church  at  a  time  when  the  communal  note  is  assumed  as 
dominant  in  mediaeval  life.  Here  again  we  must  protest 
against  the  tyranny  of  terms.  What  does  Haym  mean  by 
the  individualism  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  precisely  what  was 

'  The  tyranny  of  terms  mars  some  of  the  conclusions  in  Professor  Francke's 
valuable  book  on  Social  Forces  in  German  Literature,  and  the  "individualism  " 
to  which  he  often  refers  has  divers  meanings. 


THE    DIFFERENCING    ELEMENTS    OF   ART  153 

this  individualism  of  the  church  ?  According  as  one  looks  at 
the  church,  one  may  say  that  it  was  individual  or  that  it  was 
communal  in  its  influence.  There  are  really  three  elements  in 
the  case.  The  people  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  Europe  were  to 
a  great  extent  organized  in  a  communal  system,  for  the  unlet- 
tered community  kept  many  features  of  the  clan,  not  to  say  of 
the  horde,  and  social  growth  itself  was  a  matter  of  the  guild. 
In  such  relations  the  individual  had  little  to  say ;  and  it  was 
out  of  these  conditions  that  the  renaissance,  working  first 
through  the  Italian  commonwealths,  began  to  draw  the  indi- 
vidual into  his  new  career.  Here,  then,  was  the  communal 
Hfe  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  second  element  in  the  case  is 
the  church  as  a  huge  guild,  organized  for  the  communal  life 
out  of  which  it  grew,  and  subordinating  individual  thought, 
emotion,  will,  to  the  thought,  emotion,  and  will  of  this  whole 
body.  These  two  elements,  long  in  undisputed  power,  slowly 
yielded  to  a  third.  Within  the  church  itself,  and  at  first  un- 
able to  exist  outside  of  it,  lay  this  intellectualized  and  individ- 
ualized emotion  which  in  later  times  found  the  church  to  be 
its  implacable  foe;  whether  the  Hebrew  psalms  be  congrega- 
tional or  personal,^  it  is  certain  that  the  monk  in  his  cell  felt 
them  to  be  intensely  individual,  and  in  the  hymns  which  he 
wrote,  largely  by  inspiration  of  these  psalms,  one  finds  much 
of  that  spirit  which  fills  a  modern  lyric.  A  hymn  has  two 
meanings  for  the  Christian.  One  is  its  communal  meaning, 
as  the  Scottish  kirk  could  prove ;  and  probably  no  one  but  a 
Scot,  with  "the  graves  of  the  martyrs"  in  mind,  can  fully 
appreciate  this  meaning  of  a  congregational  hymn.  But  to 
most  people  a  hymn  has  the  individual  note  of  Jesus,  Lover 
of  my  Soul ;  this  is  the  note  of  early  Christian  hymns,  and  is 
due  to  a  protest  against  communal  conditions  ^  made  by  that 

1  See  next  chapter. 

2  Becker,   Ur sprung  der  romanischen    Versmasse,  Strassburg,   1890,  pp.  6  f., 
notes  that  a  medieval  hymn  by  no  means  expressed  mediaeval  life;    it  was  an 


154  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF    POETRY 

spirit  of  Christianity  which  has  been  its  chief  force  in  modern 
times,  that  certification  of  value  given  to  the  humblest  single 
life,  that  lifting  of  the  chattel  serf  into  a  soul ;  a  spirit  which 
began  and  fought  the  long  battle  against  tradition  of  race  and 
clan  and  guild.  De  Vigny,  in  his  ^^o^^A^xto,  Journal  of  a  Poet} 
points  out  the  importance  of  the  confessional  in  literary 
growth,  and  derives  from  this  source  the  "  romance  of  analy- 
sis," with  its  exaggeration  of  the  value  of  a  single  soul.  This 
new  accent  upon  the  individual,  due  to  the  spirit  of  a  new 
faith,  was  strengthened  in  the  Middle  Ages  by  what  one 
understood  of  the  spirit  of  classic  poets ;  and  when  the  two 
forces  had  worked  into  the  heart  of  mediaeval  life,  mediaeval 
life  ceased  to  be ;  modern  life  stood  in  its  place,  modern  art, 
letters,  statecraft  even,  all  inspired  by  the  individual  princi- 
ple.^ Now  the  mistake  made  by  men  who  talk  of  the  individ- 
ualism of  the  Middle  Ages  is  that  they  confuse  this  germ  of 
intense  personal  emotion,  mainly  confined  to  the  cell  of  the 
mediaeval  monk,  with  the  conditions  of  mediaeval  life  at  large, 
conditions,  by  the  way,  which  had  little  record  in  documents. 
One  forgets  that  the  records,  mainly  made  by  studious  monks, 
would  give  an  exaggerated  importance  to  this  personal  ele- 
ment, this  inner  life,  and  would  ignore  to  a  great  extent  the 
life  without.  Mullenhoff  did  well  to  insist  that  the  Middle 
Ages  neither  spoke  the  speech  nor  wore  the  garb  of  a  monk- 
ish  chronicle,  —  still  less,  it  may  be  added,   of  a  monkish 

individual  affair,  as  was  proved  at  length  by  Wolf,  Lais,  pp.  86  ff.,  who  calls  the 
hymns  "  kunstmassige  Gedichte  {can?niia)  "  by  known  and  named  churchmen. 
These  often  had  classical  models  in  mind.  Later  the  hymns  were  suited  to 
congregational  purposes. 

1  See  p.  172;  and  cf.  the  passage  about  the  solitary  way  of  the  poet,  p.  175 : 
''  Les  animaux  laches  vont  en  troupes.  Le  lion  marche  seul  dans  le  desert. 
Qu'ainsi  marche  toujours  le  poete." 

2  Gervinus  thinks  that  the  individual  came  to  his  rights  in  the  crusades,  when 
Christian  ideals  were  substituted  for  ancient  ideals.  But  the  classical  traditions 
of  authorship,  if  not  of  wider  issues,  were  one  with  the  individual  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity.    The  struggle  was  against  communal  conditions  of  life  in  general. 


1 


THE    DIFFERENCING    ELEMENTS   OF    ART  155 

hymn.  With  Christianity  emphasizing  the  vahie  of  a  single 
soul,  with  the  emancipation  of  the  individual  from  state,  guild, 
church,  and  with  the  secularization  of  letters  and  art,  this 
habit  of  referring  wide  issues  of  life  to  the  narrow  fortunes 
of  an  individual  made  itself  master  of  poetry.  The  emotion  of 
a  clan  yielded  to  the  emotion  of  a  single  soul.  A  progress  of 
this  sort  is  seen  in  Sir  Patrick  Spcns,  Macbeth,  and  Matthew 
Arnold's  Dover  Beach.  Chronology  in  its  higher  form  makes 
the  ballad  a  mediaeval  and  communal  affair,  the  play  a  thing 
of  art.  Each  deals  with  a  Scot  as  centre  of  tragedy.  In  the 
ballad  not  a  syllable  diverts  one  from  a  group  made  up  of  the 
sailor,  his  comrades,  and  their  kin.  The  men  put  to  sea  and 
are  drowned  ;  the  ladies  who  will  sit  vainly  waiting,  the  wives 
who  will  stand  "lang,  lang,  wi'  their  gold  kaims  in  their  hair," 
give  one  in  belated,  unconscious,  and  imperfect  form  a  survi- 
val of  the  old  clan  sorrow,  a  coronach  in  gloss.  The  men  are 
dead,  the  women  wail,  and  that  is  all.  But  Macbeth,  as  the 
crisis  draws  near,  bewails  along  with  his  own  case  the  general 
lot  of  man;  ^  "  der  Menschheit  ganzer  Jammer  fasst  ihn  an." 
Finally,  in  Dover  Beach,  modern  subjectivity  wails  and  cries 
out  on  fate  from  no  stress  of  misfortune,  but  quite  a  propos  de 
hottes  and  on  general  principles.  Subtract  now  the  changes 
due  to  epic,  dramatic,  lyric  form ;  the  progress  and  the  curve 
are  there.  The  constancy  of  human  nature,  yes ;  but  there 
are  two  worlds  in  which  this  constant  human  nature  finds 
varying  expressions :  one  is  the  mediaeval,  where  St.  Francis 
can  say  "  laudato  sia  Dio  mio  signore  con  tutte  le  creature, 
spccialmente  messer  lo  frate  sole "...  and  so  on,  with  his 
joy  in  nature;  and  one  is  the  modern,  where  Wordsworth 
must  strike  that  other  note,  wj  heart  leaps  Jip,  or  whatever 
else.  Here,  indeed,  are  two  distinct  worlds,  even  if  it  is  the 
same  human  heart. 

So,  too,  what  one  calls  objective  in  modern  poetry  is  not 

1  "To-morrow  and  to-morrow  and  to-morrow.  .  .  ." 


156  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

objective  in  the  communal,  mediaeval  sense ;  and  what  one 
thinks  to  be  sentimental  or  even  subjective  in  the  ballads  or 
other  communal  song  is  not  subjective  or  sentimental  in  any 
modern  way.  A  throng  in  those  homogeneous  conditions 
was  unsentimental  in  its  poetical  expression  for  the  good 
reason  that  a  throng  has  emotions  distinct  from  the  emotions 
of  an  individual ;  this,  too,  is  why  sentiment  and  individualism 
have  kept  step  in  the  progress  of  poetry.  Tennyson  is  objec- 
tive enough  in  his  verses  about  the  widow  of  a  slain  warrior 
and  her  rescuing  tears  when  her  child  is  brought  to  her.  But 
this  is  not  really  objective,  not  communal ;  it  is  sentiment,  of 
a  high  order  to  be  sure,  but  sentiment.  What  a  different 
point  of  view  in  the  commonplace  of  the  ballads  !  Was  the 
head    of    the    house    slain   and    the  widow    left    lamenting, 

invariably,  — 

Up  spake  the  son  on  the  nourice's  knee, 

"  Gin  I  live  to  be  a  man,  revenged  I'll  be  ;  " 

that  is  true  communal  and  objective  emotion.  Scott,  who 
was  saturated  with  ballads  and  ballad  lore,  was  the  last  of 
English  poets  who  could  write  in  an  impersonal  and  com- 
munal way.  After  him  always,  as  mostly  before  him,  the 
subjective  and  sentimental  note  came  canting  in  even  where 
severest  objectivity  is  supposed  to  reign.  If  one  wishes  to 
feel  this  in  Scott,  —  for  it  is  a  thing  to  feel  and  not  to  prove 
by  syllogisms,  —  one  has  only  to  read  the  final  stanza  of 
Bonnie  Dundee  ;  not  great  verse,  indeed,  but  full  of  a  certain 
unforced  simplicity,  a  large  air,  a  communal  vigour,  an  echo 
of  unpremeditated,  impersonal,  roundly  objective  song.  ^ 

There  is  another  process  in  the  poetry  of  art  which  serves 
to  disguise  the  real  tendency  toward  individual  instead  of 
communal  emotion.     Communal  poetry  had  a  wide,  free,  out- 

1  A  pretty  study  in  communal  feeling,  as  compared  with  artistic  and  individual 
sentiment,  could  treat  the  use  of  a  supernatural  element  in  the  ballad  Clerk 
Saunders  and  in  Keats's  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci, 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  157 

door  life  ;  the  modern  poet  is  bounded  in  a  nutshell,  —  but  he 

has  his  dreams.     With  intense  subjectivity  comes  the  need  to 

cover  a  vast  range  of  space  and  time ;  in  place  of  the  clan  or 

the  community,  its  grief  and  joy,  set  forth  by  the  communal 

song,  one  finds  a  solitary  poet,  a  sort  of  sick  king  in  Bokhara, 

dealing  with  the  universe,  and    putting  into   his    lines   that 

quality  which  is  best  expressed  in  general  by  the  often  abused 

name  of  weltschmcrz,  and  in   particular  by  those  countless 

passages  in  modern  lyric  like  the  poem  which  Shelley  wrote 

"in  dejection,"  or  that  verse  of    Keats  which  expresses  so 

admirably  the  modern  lyric  attitude  in  contrast  with  a  singing 

and  dancing  throng  :  — 

On  the  shore 
Of  the  wide  world  I  stand  alone  and  think. 

For  this  lyric  daring,  this  voyaging  through  strange  seas  of 
thought  alone,  this  blending  of  personal  reflection  with  the 
whole  range  of  human  thought  and  human  emotion,  makes 
poetry  cosmic,  but  does  not  make  it  communal  or  even 
objective.  The  sudden  interest  in  savages,  and  the  glorifi- 
cation of  primitive  virtues,  even  the  reasoning  against  reason 
and  the  emotion  for  emotion,  are  part  of  the  subjective  pro- 
cess. Jean-Jacques,  Ossian,  the  b^soin  de  rh'erie,  cosmo- 
politan sentiment  and  sensibility  set  in  vogue  by  Sterne,  ^ 
—  all  these  details  of  the  romantic  movement  need  no  em- 
phasis ;  but  it  is  significant  that  this  subjective  search  for 
the  objective  brought  genuine  communal  poetry  into  view, 
and  it  is  by  no  means  to  the  glory  of  the  critic  that  he  so 
often  puts  romantic  zeal  and  poetry  of  the  people  upon  the 
same  plane  of  origins.  The  scientific  triumphs  of  a  century 
and  more  have  added  external  nature  to  the  poet's  province ; 
they  have  put  a  new  sympathy  for  natural  things  along  with 
zeal  for  humanity  and  that  sense  of  the  individual  and  the 
artist  which  were  due  to  the  renaissance,  justifying  to  the  full 

^  See  Texte,  Rousseau,  pp.  330  ff. 


158  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Bacon's  definition  of  art  as  homo  additus  naturae.  Poetry 
now  means  the  emotional  mood  of  a  thinker  alone  with  his 
world ;  we  forget  that  it  ever  meant  anything  else. 

The  subjective  and  the  sentimental  in  such  excess  must 
each  beget  a  reaction ;  they  roll  back  upon  themselves,  and 
the  shock  has  two  results,  which  the  critic  is  tempted  at  first 
sight  to  call  objective.  One  is  the  sharp  dramatic  study, 
where  the  poet  puts  himself  into  the  place  of  another  person. 
The  second  is  that  great  reaction  of  sentiment  which  is  called 
humour.  As  for  the  dramatic  element,  there  is  no  question 
that  a  would-be  communal  reaction,  "  the  need  of  a  world  of 
men,"  follows  naturally  upon  excess  of  the  subjective  note. 
But  the  communal  reaction  cannot  restore  communal  condi- 
tions. The  xve  of  throng  poetry  has  yielded  little  by  little  to 
the  lyrical  I-and-TJioii,  and  finally  to  the  /,  pure  and  simple. 
An  obvious  reaction  is  to  put  the  /  into  the  personality  of 
another.  This  device,  now  so  common,  began  in  the  early 
renaissance  by  the  identification  of  the  poet,  not  with  another 
person,  but  with  another  class  of  persons.  Burckhardt  notes 
the  Canzone  Zingarcsca  of  Lorenzo  as  "  one  of  the  earliest 
products  of  the  purely  modern  impulse  to  put  one's  self,  in  a 
poetic  and  conscious  manner,  into  the  situation  of  a  given 
class  of  people."  The  "objectivity"  of  later  poets  runs  into 
this  mould ;  it  is  a  conscious  process,  however  well  done,  and 
is  quite  different  from  the  lack  of  all  subjective  interest  which 
marks  early  song.  One  is  reminded  of  the  splendid  efforts 
of  Horace  to  bring  back  the  courage  and  simplicity  and  aus- 
terity of  old  Roman  life  to  the  Rome  of  Augustus.  Nietzsche 
may  bid  us  build  our  cities  on  Vesuvius,  and  Stevenson  may 
revive  that  old  love  for  "  the  bright  eyes  of  danger  "  ;  but  it 
is  not  the  old  lover  that  the  Scot  revives,  and  the  silva 
antiqua  is  of  modern  planting.  The  transfer  of  persons 
brings  one  no  nearer  to  communal  objectivity  ;  it  is  a  reaction 

1  Cult.  Ren.  in  Ttal,  II.  72. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  159 

against  individual  sentiment,  which  only  throws  into  stronger 
relief  the  prevaiUng  tone  of  a  poetry  overwhelmingly  lyric, 
individual,  and  sentimental. 

Again,  growing  out  of  the  same  change  of  heart  from  the 
communal  to  the  personal  and  artistic,  is  that  essentially  mod- 
ern quality  of  humour,  which  really  springs  from  an  intensely 
subjective,  not  to  say  introspective,  state;  it  is  sentiment  in 
disguise.  One  of  the  surest  tests  of  communal  poetry  is  the 
lack  of  conscious  sentiment  and  of  conscious  humour.  When 
we  say  that  a  ballad  is  pathetic,  either  the  pathos  and  senti- 
ment are  in  solution  with  the  material  of  the  ballad,  or  else 
we  read  them  into  the  ballad  outright.^  So,  or  nearly  so, 
with  the  humour.  Communal  humour  is  cruel ;  as  religion, 
now  a  matter  of  love,  began  with  abject  fear,  laughter,  so 
unkind  scientific  folk  assert,began  as  exultation  over  the  torture 
of  a  conquered  foe,  just  as  children  are  often  amused  at  the 
suffering  of  man  and  beast,  until  they  take  the  cue  of  pity 
from  their  elders.  Fielding,  in  his  reaction  against  overdone 
sentiment,  also  went  back  to  the  communal  idea  of  humour. 
Parson  Adams  is  cudgelled  and  abused  within  an  inch  of  his 
hfe,  and  in  Tom  Jones  bloody  heads  and  broken  bones  make 
for  merriment  on  all  occasions.  The  squire  of  the  picar- 
esque novel,  —  Lazarillo  de  Tormes  for  an  early  case,  or  for 
a  late  and  trivial  example  of  tremendous  adventures  of  this 
sort,  Trufaldin  in  Pigault-Lebrun's  Folic  Espagnole — like 
the  poor  hero  of  Cervantes,  even  Uke  Mr.  Pickwick,  Uke  all 
the  breed,  may  look  to  bear  unmerciful  beatings  by  way 
of  contributing  to  the  fun.  In  the  later  ballads  of  Robin 
Hood,  tinkers  and  beggars  trounce  the  hero  again  and  again  ; 
and  it  is  a  concession  to  the  yokel's  point  of  view  when  the 
subtle  humour  of  Falstaff  in  Henry  /F  yields  to  those  indigni- 

1  Even  Icelandic  sagas,  which  show  considerable  artistic  skill,  make  the  diction 
of  their  heroes  anything  but  pathetic,  whatever  the  situation.  See  Heinzel, 
"  Beschreibung  d.  island.  Saga,"  Sitzungsberichte  IViener  Akad.,  XCVII.  119. 


l6o  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

ties  of  pinchings  and  the  buck-basket  at  which  modern  readers 

boggle  in  the  Merry  Wives.  Burckhardt  again  lays  under 
obligation  the  historian  of  hterature  in  general,  and  the  cham- 
pion of  this  antithesis  in  particular,  when  he  points  out^  the 
clannish  and  communal  note  of  what  in  the  Middle  Ages 
passed  for  humour.  It  was  a  thing  not  of  individuals  but  of 
classes,  guilds,  cities,  towns,  villages,^  countries,  —  collective 
altogether.  Jests  at  Scotchmen  or  at  our  own  Jerseymen,  and 
the  exchange  of  civilities  between  rival  colleges,  are  jaded  sur- 
vivals of  this  honest  but  obvious  merriment.  Scholars,  chiefly 
Teutonic  by  birth,^  have  a  way  of  praising  this  sort  of  thing 
as  sound,  old,  wholesome  fun,  derbcr  /mmor ;  but  it  is  an 
acquired  scholastic  taste,  and,  as  a  rule,  one  does  not  lay  down 
his  Uncle  Toby  to  listen  to  mediaeval  banter.  If  modern 
humour  is  an  antidote  against  modern  sentiment,  both  come 
from  the  same  source,  and  similia  siniilibus  was  never  more 
true  than  here  ;  sentiment  is  individualized  emotion  in  excess, 
and  humour  is  the  recoil.  Walpole  had  this  in  mind  when 
he  said  that  Hfe  is  a  tragedy  to  one  who  feels,  but  a  comedy 
to  one  who  thinks.     The  humour  which  springs  from  exces- 

1  Work  quoted,  I.  167. 

2  Northall,  English  Folk- Rhymes,  prints  a  number  of  these;  for  example,  p.  34, 
in  Lancashire,  Gorton  lads  sing :  — 

The  Abbey  Hey  bulldogs  drest  i'  rags, 
Dar'  no  com'  out  to  the  Gorton  lads. 

One  thinks,  too,  of  the   Scottish  feuds,  and  a  favourite  tune  like  that   of 

Liddesdale :  — 

O  wha  dare  meddle  wi'  me? 

O  wha  dare  meddle  wi'  me? 
My  name  it  is  little  Jock  Elliot, 

And  wha  dare  meddle  wi'  me? 

See  Chambers's  Book  of  Days,\.  200. 

3  Vilmar,  in  his  little  Ilandbiichlein,  p.  5,  is  full  of  righteous  enthusiasm  for 
an  old  cutthroat  ballad,  and  full  of  righteous  scorn  for  Heine's  cynical  lines, 
"  Spitzbiibin  war  sie,  er  war  ein  Dieb;  "  the  modern  reader,  for  his  sins,  prefers 
Heine  and  chances  the  moral  turpitude  involved  in  his  choice. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   ELEMENTS   OF   ART  l6l 

sive  thought,  from  sentiment  in  reaction,  is  at  the  world's  end 
from  that  rough  and  boisterous  communal  fun  ;  it  is  equally 
removed  from  delight  in  tragedy,  itself  a  sign  of  youth. ^  To 
trace  the  course  of  modern  poetic  humour  from  Chaucer,  Vil- 
lon, Dunbar,  down  to  Heine,  who  does  in  verse  what  Sterne 
did  in  prose,  would  be  "  a  journey  like  the  path  to  heaven," 
in  whichever  sense  one  chooses  to  take  the  comparison,  — 
delightful  or  difficult ;  enough  in  this  place  to  point  out  the 
flickering  humour  that  plays  across  the  subjectivity  and  sen- 
timent of  Heine's  DeatJi  Bcd^  with  its  parody  of  Homer,  its 
scorn  for  the  public,  and  all  the  rest. 

Such  are  the  chief  differencing  factors  of  the  poetry  of 
art  as  they  appear  in  process  of  evolution  from  the  Middle 
Ages  to  the  present  time.  They  belong  to  poetic  material ; 
a  further  result  of  the  process  appears  in  poetic  style.  In- 
dividual and  sentimental  poetry  has  developed  a  poetic 
dialect  and  widened  the  gap  between  the  speech  of  a  poet 
and  the  speech  of  common  life.  This  goes  deeper  than 
conventional  phrases  and  epic  repetitions,  which  at  first  sight 
induce  one  to  assert  precisely  the  opposite  view  and  call 
modern  poetry  a  return  from  the  conventional  to  the  simple 
in  expression.  Emotion,  however,  that  is  spontaneous,  com- 
munal, direct,  and  without  taint  of  reflection,  will  catch  the 
nearest  way  and  avoid  deliberate  or  conscious  figures  of 
speech,  the  trope  or  "  turning  "  pecuHar  to  our  verse ;  and 
there  is  a  steady  progress  in  poetry  from  the  simple  or 
natural  ^  —  which    does    not    exclude    the    metaphorical,    if 

'  Interest  even  in  the  great  tragedies  has  come  to  be  duty  rather  than  incHna- 
tion.  In  the  Abbe  Dubos's  day  tragedy  was  still  preferred;  but  he  says  that 
whereas  he  read  Racine  with  keenest  delight  at  thirty  ("  lorsqu'il  etoit  occupe 
des  passions  que  ces  pieces  nous  depeignent  "),  at  sixty  it  was  Moliere. 

-  Der  Scheidende.  Sentiment  naturally  turns  to  the  cadence  of  rhythm,  while 
humour  feels  at  home  in  prose ;  hence  it  is  easy  to  see  that  humour  in  verse,  as  with 
Heine,  is  ancillary  to  sentiment,  while  sentiment  in  prose,  as  with  Sterne  and 
even  Lamb,  is  ancillary  to  humour. 

'  See  below,  Chap.  VII. 
M 


l62  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

only  metaphor  be  the  outcome  of  unconscious  processes  of 
speech  —  to  the  tropical;  poetry  little  by  little  makes  its 
own  dialect.^  Of  course  there  are  excesses  and  subsequent 
returns  to  simplicity,  witness  the  metaphysical  school  of 
poets  in  England  ;  but  the  tendency  is  always  to  the  in- 
dividual, which  is  the  unusual  and  unexpected,  and  hence 
to  the  metaphorical.  Precisely,  too,  as  sentiment  turned 
upon  itself,  so  the  metaphorical  turns  upon  itself  and  makes 
a  metaphor  out  of  the  literal ;  for  example.  Professor  Wood- 
berry  in  his  sonnet  on  a  portrait  of  Columbus  :  — 

Is  this  the  face,  and  these  'Cat  finding  eyes  ? 

But  this  simplicity  and  objective  force  of  poetic  language, 
rarely  so  successful  as  here,  and  rare  in  any  case,  is  itself 
subjective  and  the  outcome  of  individual  assertion. 

It  is  now  in  order  to  look  at  survivals  of  communal  and  < 

primitive  verse,  and  to  learn  from  a  study  of  their  differenc- 
ing factors  no  longer  what  the  beginnings  of  poetry  were 
not,  but  what  they  really  were. 


^  See  the  author's  Old  English  Ballads,  p.  xxx,  and  reference  to  Wordsworth's 
famous  preface.  See  also  Gray's  letter  to  R.  West,  April,  1742,  "The  language 
of  the  age  is  never  the  language  of  poetry,"  and  what  follows. 


I 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  DIFFERENCING  ELEMENTS  OF  COMMUNAL  POETRY 

Survival  of  primitive  and  communal  poetry  as  it  can  be 
detected  in  the  ballads  and  the  popular  rimes  of  Europe,  in 
the  songs  of  those  savage  tribes  which  seem  to  come  nearest 
to  conditions  of  prehistoric  life,  and  in  the  beginnings  of 
national  literatures  so  far  as  any  trustworthy  record  remains, 
must  now  be  studied  analytically,  not  as  poems,  but  rather 
with  a  view  to  the  elements  which  difference  poetry  of  the 
people  from  the  poetry  of  individual  art.  That  a  consider- 
able body  of  verse,  European  as  well  as  savage,  represents 
the  community  in  mass  rather  than  the  solitary  poet,  is  uni- 
versally conceded ;  it  is  generally  but  not  universally  con- 
ceded that  the  making  of  such  communal  poetry  is  under 
modern  conditions  a  closed  account.  If  this  view  is  correct, 
a  curve  of  decline  and  extinction  can  be  drawn  correspond- 
ing to  that  curve  of  the  developing  artistic  and  individual 
type  considered  above.  With  this  assertion  of  a  closed 
account,  however,  must  go  a  caution  of  great  weight;  the 
actual  traditional  ballad  of  Europe  is  not  to  be  carried  back 
into  prehistoric  conditions.  A  process  of  this  sort  brings 
ridicule  upon  arguments  which  ought  to  be  made  in  rational 
terms ;  and  it  is  to  the  elements  of  prehistoric  poetry  surviv- 
ing in  a  ballad,  and  in  kindred  verse,  that  one  must  look,  not 
to  the  whole  poem,  which  is  a  complex  of  communal  and 
artistic  materials.  One  may  say  without  fear  of  a  contradic- 
tion in  terms  that  the  ballad  has  in  it  elements  which  go  back 
to  certain  conditions  of  poetic  production  utterly  unknown  to 
the  modern  poem  of  art.     These  elements  also  occur  as  frag- 

163 


l64  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

ments  in  popular  rimes ;  but  the  ballad  has  drawn  chief 
attention  because  it  is  a  complete  and  readable  poem  in 
itself. 

These  ballads  of  Europe  have  a  large  literature  both  of  col- 
lection and  of  criticism ;  ^  and  in  some  cases,  notably  the 
English,  collection  of  material  has  the  melancholy  advantage 
of  being  final.  Despite  arguments  of  Mr.  Joseph  Jacobs 
and  Dr.  John  Meier,"^  the  making  of  ballads  is  a  closed 
account;  that  is,  a  popular  ballad  of  to-day,  even  if  one 
allows  the  term  to  pass,  is  essentially  different  from  a  ballad 
such  as  one  finds  in  the  collection  of  Professor  Child.  Con- 
ditions of  production  in  the  street,  the  concert,  the  cafe- 
chantant,  even  in  the  rural  gatherings ^  controlled  by  that 
"bucolic  wit,"  are  different  from  the  conditions  of  produc- 
tion which  prevailed  in  a  homogeneous  and  unlettered  com- 
munity of  mediaeval  Europe.  A.  E.  Berger,  in  a  popular 
essay  *  which  may  go  with  that  of  Dr.  John  Meier  as  repre- 
senting an  extravagant  rationalism  now  in  vogue  about 
poetry  of  the  people  quite  as  extreme  as  the  extravagant 

1  See  the  author's  Old  English  Ballads,  Boston,  1894,  Introduction  (on  termi- 
nology, origins,  criticism),  and  Appendix  I.  (  The  Ballads  of  Europe).  For  collec- 
tions, see,  of  course,  the  material  in  the  tenth  volume  of  Child's  great  work.  On 
the  relations  of  this  communal  ballad  to  the  other  kind  of  ballads,  see  Holtzhausen, 
Ballade  und  Romanze,  Halle,  1882,  and  Chevalier,  Ztir  Poetik  der  Ballade,  Pro- 
gramme of  the  Prague  Obergymnasium,  in  four  parts,  Prague,  1891-1895. 

2  "  Volkslied  und  Kunstlied  in  Deutscbland,"  Beilage  zur  Allgemeinen  Zeitung, 
Munich,  Nos.  53,  54,  March,  1898,  — a  paper  first  read  in  October,  1897. 

^  Only  the  narrative  song  is  here  considered;    for  popular  lyric  see  below. 

*  "  Volksdichtung  und  Kunstdichtung,"  in  Nord  und  Siid,  LXVIII.  (1894), 
76  ff.  It  may  be  noted  here  that  the  temptation  to  take  this  easy  attitude  toward 
poetry  of  the  people,  as  toward  a  fictitious  and  fanciful  affair,  is  largely  due  to  a 
misunderstanding  of  the  evolutionary  side  of  the  case.  The  distinction  is  not  one 
of  coexistent  forms  of  poetry  so  much  as  of  successive  stages  of  evolution.  It  is 
no  hard  matter  to  take  so-called  popular  poetry  of  the  day  and  reduce  it  to  terms 
of  art  —  the  lowest  terms,  of  course;  but  with  poetry  of  the  people  treated  as  a 
closed  or  closing  account,  and  with  historical  evidence  about  it  in  former  times,  a 
very  different  pnjblem  is  presented.  An  important  hint  to  this  effect  was  given  by 
Dr.  Eugen  Wolff  in  his  paper  "iiber  den  Stil  des  Nibclungenhedes,"  Verhandlun- 
gcn  der  vierzigsten  Versammlung  deutscher  Philologen,  etc.,  Leipzig,  1890,  pp.  259  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         165 

romanticism  of  Grimm,  limits  the  difference  between  this 
poetry  and  the  poetry  of  art  to  the  difference  of  oral  and 
of  written  record ;  but  he  quite  concedes  the  closed  account. 
Here,  however,  the  two  rationalists  get  into  a  deadlock.  Dr. 
Meier  will  not  allow  the  closed  account,  goes  back  to  Stein- 
thal,  and  against  the  modern  view  asserts  that  dichfen  des 
volks,  the  ownership  of  a  poem  by  the  folk  at  large,  who 
sing  it  into  a  thousand  changing  forms.  The  process 
according  to  Meier  is  now  what  it  always  has  been,  first  an 
individual  composition,  then  oblivion  of  the  individual  and 
popularity  for  the  song,  which  is  felt  by  the  people  —  "a 
necessary  condition  of  folk-poetry  " —  to  be  their  own,  with 
manifold  changes  due  in  no  case  to  any  artistic  purpose  or 
deliberation.  Now  in  all  this  Dr.  Meier  puts  himself  at  odds 
with  the  defenders  of  oral  poetry  as  held  apart  from  written 
and  printed  verse,  a  distinction  which  he  ignores.  He 
agrees  with  them  that,  in  the  words  of  Berger,  "  there  is 
no  organic  difference  between  poetry  of  the  people  and  the 
poetry  of  art ;  "  but  the  difference  that  does  exist  for  Meier 
prettily  contradicts  the  difference  assumed  by  the  others, 
Berger  and  the  rest  regarding  the  ballad,  a  thing  of  oral 
tradition,  as  now  out  of  date.  Not  only  does  one  test  neu- 
tralize the  other  test,  but  both  parties  to  this  deadlock  take  a 
point  of  view  fatal  to  any  real  mastery  of  the  subject.  They 
fail  to  look  at  the  conditions  under  which  communal  poetry 
was  produced,  and  they  fail  to  study  it  in  its  essential  elements. 
From  this  proper  point  of  view,  however,  it  is  clear  that  tra- 
ditional ballads  were  not  made  as  a  song  of  the  street  or  the 
concert-hall  is  now  made,  and  it  is  clear  that  ballads  of  that 
communal  kind  are  not  made  under  modern  conditions.  It 
has  just  been  shown  that  the  difference  between  mediaeval 
poetry  at  large  and  poetry  of  the  day  may  be  best  expressed 
in  terms  of  the  guild  and  the  community  as  against  the  in- 
dividual and  subjective  note.      Poetry  of  the  guild,   if   the 


l66  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

phrase  will  pass,  was  composed  by  poets  of  the  guild  and 
found  a  record ;  we  are  wont  to  think  that  sort  of  thing 
made  up  all  mediaeval  poetry ;  but  the  community  itself  had 
a  vast  amount  of  song  which  was  composed  in  public  and  for 
the  occasion,  found  no  written  record,  and  is  recovered  only 
in  varying  traditional  forms.  The  conditions  of  modern  life 
forbid  the  old  communal  expression,  free  and  direct ;  but  of 
course  the  throng  is  still  bound  to  voice  its  feelings,  and 
takes  the  poetry  of  art,  masters  it,  owns  it,  changes  it, 
precisely  as  Dr.  Meier  contends,  but  with  no  very  edifying 
results.  Every  collection  of  ballads,  even  of  folksongs,  with 
their  dignity,  their  note  of  distinction,  compared  with  sorry 
stuff  of  the  streets,  bears  witness  to  this  difference  between 
old  and  new.  Landstad  ^  in  1848  noted  that  ballads  were 
fast  vanishing  from  Norway.  Bujeaud^  complains  that  in 
France  "new"  and  fatuous  verses  supplant  traditional  song; 
and  he  gives  as  example  a  "  chanson  nouvelle  dedi6e  a  une 
jeune  fille."  Ralston,^  for  Russia,  comments  on  the  new 
popular  verse  "  laboriously  produced  in  the  towns  and  un- 
blushingly  fathered  upon  soldiers  and  gypsies."  Save  in  a 
few  dialects,  the  old  runes,  and  with  them  the  power  to  make 
popular  song,  are  dying  out  in  Finland ;  communal  poetry 
there  is  going  to  pieces,  and  the  process  confirms  what  was 
said  above  about  the  relations  of  feeHng  and  thought  in 
verse.*     Throughout  Germany  ^  the  current  ballads  and  f olk- 

^  No7-ske  Folkeviser,  Christiania,  1853,  pp.  iii  f. 

2  Chants  et  Chansons  Populaires  des  Provinces  de  V  Quest,  Niort,  i  S95, 1.  1 2.  For 
the  authorship,  Le  Braz  remarks,  Soniou-Breiz-Izel,  Chansons  Pop.  d.  I.  Basse-Bre- 
tagne,  Introd.,  p.  xxv,  "^  mesure  que  les  productions  populaires  deviennent  plus 
raediocres,  leurs  auteurs  se  font  un  devoir  de  conscience  de  les  contresigner." 

•*  Songs  0/  the  Russia  ti  People,  p.  40. 

*  Krohn,  "  La  Chanson  Populaire  en  Finlande,"  Proceedings  Internat.  Folk- 
Lore  Congress,  1891,  pp.  134  ff.,  a  valuable  paper.  "La  poesie  s'est  refugiee 
dans  la  pensee,  mais  elle  n'a  pu  se  maintenir  intacte  de  trivialite."  See  also 
Comparetti,  Kalewala,  pp.  16  f. 

6  E.  H.  Meyer,  Volkskunde,  pp.  327,  331. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         167 

songs  are  seldom  even  traditional ;  hardly  anywhere  are  they 
made  in  field  and  spinning-room  as  they  were  made  half  a 
century  ago.  At  the  annual  dinner  of  the  border  shepherds, 
held  at  Yetholm  in  the  Cheviots,  so  Sir  George  Douglas^ 
relates,  "there  is  no  longer  any  thought  of  native  inspira- 
tion ;  the  songs  sung  after  dinner  are  of  the  type  familiar  in 
more  vulgar  localities,  and  known  as  'songs  of  the  day.' 
Even  the  old  ballads  are  neglected."  Traditional  native 
songs  of  the  countryside  have  vanished  from  the  fields  and 
villages  of  Europe,  and  are  replaced  by  opera  airs,  sentimen- 
tal ditties,  and  the  like;  Loquin's  attempt^  to  refer  the  old 
songs  to  similar  sources  is  anything  but  a  success ;  indeed, 
as  one  hears  the  new  and  thinks  of  the  old,  one  is  reminded 
of  an  ignoble  analogy  in  the  habit  of  many  farmers  here  in 
eastern  America,  who  sell  their  fresh  fruit  and  vegetables,  or 
neglect  to  raise  any,  and  use  with  relish  and  a  kind  of  pride 
the  inevitable  "canned  goods."  On  many  farms  the  kitchen- 
garden  has  vanished  like  the  old  songs.'^  Apart  from  these 
base  respects,  however,  it  is  clear  that  the  throng  is  power- 
less to  revive  even  mediaeval  conditions ;  and  the  traditional 
ballad,  as  every  competent  editor  either  asserts  or  implies,  is 
no  longer  to  be  made.  Ferdinand  Wolf,  Grundtvig,*  Talvj, 
and  a  number  of  others,  declare  that  the  homogeneous  and 
unlettered  community,  now  no  longer  with  us,  is  the  only 
source  of  a  genuine  ballad.     True,  communities  can  still  be 

"^  James  Hogg  (Famous  Scots  Series),  p.  25. 

2  In  Melusine,  IV,  (1888-1889),  pp.  49  ff.,  and  continued. 

^  It  is  significant  that  the  vogue  of  singing-clubs  in  German  rural  districts, 
which  would  seem  to  make  for  communal  ballads,  really  drives  them  out.  See 
Dunger,  Hundds  u.  Reitnspriiche  aus  dem  Vogtlande,  Plauen,  1876,  p.  xxx. 

*  The  introduction  to  Rosa  Warrens's  Schwedische  Volkslieder,  1857,  is  by 
Wolf,  and  Grundtvig  did  a  similar  favour  for  her  Danische  Volkslieder,  1858; 
opposed  as  regards  authorship,  the  two  are  agreed  on  the  source  of  a  ballad  in  the 
homogeneous  community.  This  even  Comparetti  recognizes  :  Kalewala,  p.  21. 
See,  too,  Liliencron,  Deiitsches  Leben  im  Volkslied  um  1^30,  p.  xi.,  and  Baring- 
Gould,  English  Minstrelsie,  Vol.  VII.  Introduction  ("  On  English  Song-Mak- 
ing").    But  it  is  useless  to  pile  up  these  references. 


l68  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

found  which  have  something  of  the  old  conditions  and  of  the 
old  power.  Mr.  Baring-Gould  notes  that  in  divers  places 
English  folk  still  sing,  perhaps  even  make,  the  good  and 
genuine  song.  A  correspondent  of  the  New  York  Evening 
Post,  in  a  pleasant  letter  ^  describing  the  Magyar  dance  and 
song,  notes  that  these  people  prefer  singing  to  talking,  and 
makes  the  statement  that  "  there  is  scarcely  a  stable-boy  or  a 
kitchen-maid  who  has  not,  at  some  time,  been  the  creator  of 
at  least  one  song  —  both  words  and  music.  The  favourite 
time  for  launching  these  ventures  on  the  part  of  the  young 
women  is  when  they  gather  to  spin  in  the  evenings."  Sir 
George  Douglas,  in  the  note  already  quoted,  says  that  bal- 
lads of  tradition  have  retreated  from  shepherds  to  "a  yet 
shyer  and  less  sophisticated  set  of  men,  to  wit,  the  fishermen 
of  the  smaller  fishing  towns."  It  is  said,  too,  that  conditions 
quite  analogous  to  those  of  the  old  Scottish  border,  and  bal- 
lads of  corresponding  quality,  some  of  them,  indeed,  very 
ancient  ballads  of  tradition,  may  be  found  in  the  mountains 
of  Kentucky.  But  this  is  all  sporadic  and  dying  activity.  In 
favoured  places  it  is  still  true,  as  Professor  E.  H.  Meyer  says 
of  Germany,  that  communal  singing  lingers,^  but  even  this  is 
moribund ;  and  communal  making,  so  he  admits,  is  dead.^ 
More  than  this :  no  modern  poet,  however  great,  has  yet 
succeeded  in  reviving  the  ballad  in  imitation.     Scott,  not  to 

1  January  27,  1900. 

2  Of  course,  one  community  may  still  sing,  while  another  has  forgotten.  r>eau- 
repaire,  Etude  sur  la  Poesie  Populaire  en  Normandie,  1856,  pp.  24  f.,  notes 
this,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  some  kinds  of  songs  linger  while  others  die.  He 
found  no  vocero  left  in  Normandy,  hut  old  choral  wedding  songs  still  were  heard. 
The  dance  is  going  —  the  old  village  dance,  the  ronde  :  pp.  30  f. 

'  Bockel,  Deutsche  Volkslieder  aus  Oberhessen,  Marlnirg,  1885,  ^'^^  «^"  introduc- 
tion of  great  value,  which  shows  how  utterly  German  folksong  is  a  closed  account. 
Traditional  ballads  are  still  sung,  but  none  are  made;  what  is  now  made  is  mainly 
"  Schmutz  und  Rohheit."  Factories,  singing-schools,  are  putting  an  end  to  com- 
munal song.  The  process  of  decay,  he  thinks,  began  as  early  as  1600.  For 
description  of  modern  communal  songs,  see  p.  cxxviii.  Folksong,  he  says 
(p.  clxxxiii),  is  dead  throughout  civilized  Furope. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         169 

speak  of  the  failures  of  Leyden  and  Sharpe,  made  poems  in 
some  respects  as  good  as  the  old  ballads,  and  made  a  beauti- 
ful bit  of  verse  —  Proud  Maisie  is  in  the  Wood  —  very  like  a 
folksong;  but  they  are  not  the  real  ballad,  the  real  folk- 
song, and  Scott  would  have  been  first  to  deny  the  identity. 
As  for  the  street  songs  and  that  sort  of  verse,  from  the  wheez- 
ing sentimental  ditties  down,^  one  has  only  to  compare  them 
with  genuine  old  ballads  to  see  how  utterly  they  fail  to  meet 
any  test  of  really  communal  poetry.  Even  three  centuries 
ago,  when  earth  was  nearer  the  ballad  heaven  than  now, 
broadsides,  "garlands,"  trash  of  the  street  and  the  hawker's 
basket,  all  balladry  of  trade,  were  sharply  sundered  from 
the  good  old  songs.  One  knows  what  Ben  Jonson  thought 
of  "  ballading  silk-weavers "  and  the  rest ;  one  also  knows 
the  saying  attributed  to  him  by  Addison  that  he  would 
rather  have  been  author  of  Chevy  CJiace  than  of  all  his 
own  works.^ 

A  word  is  needed,  however,  before  one  passes  from  this 
matter  of  the  closed  account,  in  regard  to  a  notion  that 
people  hold  about  modern  communal  song.  It  is  still 
made,  they  say,  by  the  lower  classes,  but  it  is  too  indecent 
for  currency,  and   is  conventionally  unknown.       Now  it   is 

1  See  John  Ashton,  Modern  Street  Ballads,  London,  1888.  For  the  French, 
see  C.  Nisard,  Les  Chansons  Populaires  chez  les  Anciens  et  chez  les  Fran<;ais,  essai 
historique  suivi  d^une  etude  sur  la  chanson  des  rues  contemporaine,  .  .  .  Paris, 
1867,  2  vols.  Vol.  IL  treats  street  songs.  This  is  really  a  continuation  of 
Nisard's  Histoire  des  Livres  Populaires,  2  vols.,  1854,  on  almanacs,  prophecies, 
divinations,  magic,  etc.  Nisard's  account  of  origins  is  ridiculous,  —  or  perhaps  it 
is  meant  to  be  playful.     See  L  69. 

2  In  addition  to  the  material  quoted  in  the  introduction  to  Old  English  Ballads, 
see  Nash,  Harvey,  and  the  other  pamphleteers  on  nearly  every  page.  Chettle, 
Kind-Harts  Dreame  (Percy  Soc,  1841),  particularly  pp.  9  ff.,  has  a  lively  account 
of  ballad  making,  printing,  selling,  singing,  in  this  lower  stratum.  What  is  so 
lewd,  he  asks,  that  it  has  not  been  printed  "  and  in  every  streete  abusively 
chanted"?  For  the  state  of  things  somewhat  later,  see  a  curious  publication, 
IV/iimzies,  or  a  New  Cast  of  Characters,  London,  1631;  it  describes  in  alphabeti- 
cal order,  "  almanach-maker,"  "  ballad-monger,"  and  so  on,  down  to  "  zealous 
brother";  for  ballad-monger,  see  pp.  8-15. 


170  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

a  fact  which  may  well  get  emphasis  here,  that  the  real 
ballad  of  tradition,  while  it  never  boggles  at  a  plain  name 
for  things  now  rather  understood  than  expressed,  is  at  a 
vast  remove  from  the  obscene,  and  from  those  hulking 
indecencies  which,  along  with  the  vapid  and  the  sentimental, 
make  up  the  bulk  of  modern  unprinted  and  unmentioned 
song.  Herd  printed  a  few  high-kilted  ballads,^  but  even  age 
refuses  to  lend  them  the  appearance  of  communal  and  tradi- 
tional ;  and  the  chasm  grows  wider  when  one  deals  with  an 
audacious  collection  like  that  of  Mr.  Farmer,^  where  "  high- 
kilted  "  is  a  mild  name  for  nearly  all  the  specimens.  Here, 
now,  are  those  "songs  of  Burns"  —  to  which  Blemont  ap- 
pealed for  proof  that  the  popular  muse  is  still  prolific  — 
running  to  a  favourite  tune,  but  on  the  forbidden  ground ; 
here  are  obscenities,  drolleries,  facetiae,  such  as  grooms  and 
the  baser  sort  still  sing  everywhere,  and  such  as  the  Roman 
scratched  on  a  wall.  Here  are  the  songs  in  cold  print,  and 
with  the  label  "national";  it  is  no  answer  to  ignore  them. 
But  when  some  one  nods  his  head  shrewdly,  and  stands 
with  arms  encumbered,  and  says  one  could,  if  one  would, 
show  this  same  old  ballad  still  made  by  bards  of  the  people 
and  sung  up  and  down  the  land  as  aforetime,  only  it  is  not 
fit  for  ears  foolishly  polite,  and  all  the  rest,  —  then,  indeed, 
it  is  well  to  bring  the  matter  to  book.  For  these  songs  are 
not  really  traditional  ballads,  and  never  belonged  to  the 
community  as  a  whole ;  the  ballad  of  old  oral  tradition  did 
belong  to  the  community  as  a  whole.  Quite  apart  from 
ethics,  with  no  rant  after  the  manner  of  Vilmar,  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  communal  poetry,  sung  in  a  representa- 
tive throng,  cannot  well  be  obscene ;  made  by  the   public 


^  Ancient  and  Modern  Scottish  Songs, 

2  National  Ballad  and  Song :  Merry  Songs  and  Ballads  Prior  to  the  Year  1800  ; 
5  vols.,  privately  printed  for  subscribers  only,  1897.  The  fourth  volume  of  the 
Percy  Folio  teaches  a  like  lesson. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         1 71 

and  in  public,  it  cannot  conceivably  run  against  the  public 
standard  of  morality.  Australian  songs  such  as  Scherer 
studied  shock  the  European ;  maypole  songs  of  older  Eng- 
land were  an  offence  to  the  Puritan ;  mediaeval  doings 
on  Shrove-Tuesday  night  were  not  to  edification ;  crowds 
as  well  as  individuals  even  now  like  at  times  to  give  voice 
to  their  belief  in  cakes  and  ale ;  but  notwithstanding  all 
these  allowances,  it  is  clear  that  a  song  made  and  sung 
by  a  really  communal  crowd  will  give  no  room  to  private 
vices  and  to  those  events  and  situations  which  get  their 
main  charm  from  a  centrifugal  tendency  with  regard  to 
public  morals.  This  hole-and-corner  minstrelsy  is  no  part 
of  communal  song ;  for  further  proof,  one  may  note  the 
few  genuine  old  ballads,  quite  free  from  indecencies,  which 
Mr.  Farmer  prints,  and  which  are  such  a  foil  to  the  super- 
fluity of  naughtiness  before  and  after.  They  are  of  a  differ- 
ent world.  In  short,  the  main  thing  is  to  remember  the 
protest  made  so  strongly  by  Herder  and  by  Richard  Wagner. 
"  Folk,  —  that  does  not  mean  the  rabble  of  the  street,"  ran 
Herder's  formula^  for  the  past;  while  Wagner ^  describes 
the  united  "  folk  "  of  the  future  for  whom  and  from  whom 
alone  art  of  a  high  order  may  be  expected.  But  Wagner's 
folk  of  the  future  can  never  be  that  homogeneous,  unlettered 
folk  of  a  mediaeval  community  from  which  sprang  our  com- 
munal verse  of  tradition.  "  Many  epochs,"  says  Bruchmann,^ 
"  give  one  the  impression  as  if  in  old  times  singing  and  the 
making  of  poetry  were  universal  gifts.  This  is  psychologi- 
cally conceivable.  The  more  uniform  the  intellectual  life  of 
individuals  .  .  .  the  more  we  may  expect  uniform  utterance 
of  that  life.     So  the  poetry  of  such  a  time  would  be  entirely 

1  Werke,  ed.  Suphan,  XXV.  323. 

2  See  above,  p.  121. 

8  Poetik  (well  called  NaturUhre  der  Dichiung,  and  an  excellent  piece  of  work), 
pp.  99  ff. 


1/2  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

poetry  of  the  peopled  It  is  clear  that  such  conditions  are 
far  removed  from  the  present,^  and  that  the  making  of  com- 
munal poetry  in  any  appreciable  quantity  or  quality  must 
now  be  a  closed  account. 

So  much  for  the  curve  of  evolution  by  which  these  communal 
elements  of  poetry  decline  as  they  approach  our  time,  and 
increase  as  one  retraces  the  path  of  poetry  and  song.  But 
one  is  by  no  means  to  suppose  that  the  ballad  of  tradition,  as 
it  lies  before  one  now,  can  be  taken  as  an  accurate  type  of 
earliest  communal  song.  Sir  Patrick  Spens  and  Imisprikk, 
ich  muss  dicJi  lassen  are  not  perfect  examples  of  the  songs 
which  primitive  man  used  to  sing,  not  even  of  the  original 
mediaeval  ballad  such  as  the  women  made  about  St.  Faro  in 
France  or  as  those  islanders  made  a  hundred  years  ago  about 
the  frustrated  fisherman.  Improvisation  in  a  throng  cannot 
give  the  unity  of  purpose  and  the  touch  of  art  which  one  finds 
in  Spens ;  that  comes  partly  from  individual  and  artistic 
strands  woven  in  with  the  communal  stuff,  and  partly  from 
the  process  by  which  a  ballad  constantly  sung  in  many  places, 
and  handed  down  by  oral  tradition  alone,  selects  as  if  by  its 
own  will  the  stanzas  and  phrases  which  best  suit  its  public. 
What  one  asserts,  however,  Is  that  in  this  ballad  of  Spens, 
although  in  less  degree  than  with  other  ballads,  the  presence 
of  artistic  elements  is  overcome  by  the  preponderating  influ- 
ence of  certain  communal  elements.  These  communal 
elements  are  to  be  studied  in  all  available  material,  and  con- 
sist, taken  in  the  mass,  of  repetitions  of  word  and  phrase, 
chorus,  refrain,  singing,  dancing,  and  traces  of  general  im- 
provisation ;  and  all  these  elements,  except  for  imitative 
purposes,  are  lacking  in  the  poem  of  art,  or  if  present,  are 

1  When  folk  read  and  write,  they  cease  to  improvise  poetry,  and  the  folksong 
really  ceases;  that  the  sesthetic  impulse,  however,  abides  with  them,  even  in  low 
levels,  but  has  other  results,  is  shown  by  Gustav  Meyer  in  an  interesting  passage 
of  his  "  Neugriechische  Volkslieder,"  Essays,  p.  309. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         173 

overwhelmed  by  the  artistic  elements.  Even  in  the  ballads 
which  have  gone  on  record,  and  are  made  artistic  to  some 
degree  by  this  very  act,  —  killed  with  kindness,  —  there  are 
still  more  traces  of  the  throng  than  of  the  individual  artist ; 
this  transfer  from  conditions  of  communal  making  and  tradi- 
tion to  conditions  of  artistic  record  must  always  be  taken 
into  account.  The  collector  of  oral  tradition,  particularly 
ballads,  finds  it  nigh  impossible  to  write  them  down  in  their 
uncontaminated  state  ;  he  gathers  flowers,  but  what  he  puts 
into  his  book  is  only  a  hottus  siccus.  Anecdotes  in  proof  of 
this  abound ;  one  may  be  quoted  from  the  account  given  by 
Hogg  ^  of  a  visit  from  Scott  in  1802,  soon  after  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Boj'dcr  Minstrelsy,  where  Scott  printed  some 
ballads  which  the  Ettrick  shepherd  had  taken  down  from  his 
mother's  singing.  Now  the  mother  was  face  to  face  with 
Scott,  and  sang  him  the  ballad  of  Old  Maitlaii  ;  delighted, 
S:ott  asked  her  if  it  had  ever  been  in  print.  No,  she  said ; 
never  one  of  her  songs  had  been  printed  till  Scott  had 
printed  them,  and  in  doing  so  he  had  entirely  spoiled 
them.  "They  were  made  for  singing  an'  no  for  read- 
ing ;  but  ye  hae  broken  the  charm  now,  an'  they'll  never 
be  sung  mair."  And  Hogg  adds  :  "  My  mother  has  been 
too  true  a  prophetess,  for  from  that  day  to  this,  these 
songs,  which  were  the  amusement  of  every  winter  evening, 
have  never  been  sung  more."  — And  now  to  these  vanishing 
or  vanished  songs  themselves. 

We  are  to  examine  the  European  ballad  or  traditional 
narrative  song,  and  compare  its  elements  with  such  shards  of 
communal  verse  as  are  still  found  here  and  there,  and  with 
ethnological  material ;  lyric  of  the  people  and  refrains  for  the 
dance  will  be  studied  in  another  place.  The  lyric,  though 
simple  and  "  popular "  enough,  is  mainly  an  affair  of  the 
lover  and  his  lass,  and  has  the  centrifugal  more  than   the 

1  Sir  George  Douglas,  Hogg,  pp.  38  f. 


174  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

communal  tendency  even  in  that  jolly  little  song,  now  six  or 
seven  hundred  years  old,  which  jumps  so  easily  into  English, 
the  Du  bist  ■>mn:  ^  — 

Thou  art  mine,  I  am  thine, 

Of  that  right  certain  be  ! 
Locked  thou  art  within  my  heart, 

And  I  have  lost  the  key  : 

There  must  thou  ever  be  ! 

Refrains  for  the  dance,^  of  course,  are  communal  and 
express  communal  joy ;  one  of  them,  with  both  the  interjec- 
tional  and  the  full  refrain,  leaves  no  doubt  at  all ;  it  is  a  song 
for  the  dance  of  May  :  ^  — 

A  I'entrada  del  tems  clar,  —  eya, 
per  joja  recomensar,  —  eya, 
e  per  jelos  irritar,  —  eya, 
vol  la  regina  mostrar 
qu'er  est  si  amoroza. 
Alavf  alavza,  jelos, 
laissaz  fios,  laissaz  nos, 
ballar  entre  nos,  etitre  fios. 

To  these  refrains  of  the  dance  we  shall  return  in  due  time ; 
the  bulk  of  popular  lyric  is  simple,  rural,  but  not  communal. 
There  remain  the  epic  survival,  the  ballad,  and  popular 
rimes.  Epic  in  the  larger  sense  is  not  to  be  considered  here  ; 
for  it  comes  down  to  us  at  the  hands  of  art,  communal  as 
it  may  have  been  in  its  beginnings,  and  it  is  not  a  simple 
contemporary  note  of  deeds  which  have  a  merely  local  and 
social   interest,   a   stage    of   development    common   to    most 

^  See  the  context  of  it  in  Lachmann  u.  Haupt,  Minnesangs  Fruhling,  pp.  221  ff. 

2Jeanroy,  Origines  de  la  Poesie  Lyriqiie  en  France,  Paris,  1889,  Part  III., 
shows  conclusively  the  origin  of  these  songs  in  the  public  dance. 

3  "  Balade  "  of  the  twelfth  century  :  Bartsch,  Chrestomathic  Proven^ale,  p.  107. 
Alavia  =  "  away  from  us,  begone,"  the  procul  este  profani  of  the  dancers.  See 
also  G.  Paris,  Origines  de  la  Poesie  Lyrique,  etc.,  a  review  of  Jeanroy,  Paris,  1892, 
pp.  12  ff.  The  rimes  in  -ar  running  through  this  stanza  and  the  rest,  and  certain 
touches  of  art,  show  the  changes  in  record;  but  the  refrain  and  the  spirit  of  the 
piece  are  quite  communal. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL  ELEMENTS         175 

traditional  ballads.^  One  sees,  if  one  will  glance  at  the 
actual  ballad,  why  theories  of  Niebuhr  and  of  Buckle  about 
the  foundation  of  history  in  artless  chronicles  of  this  com- 
munal type  must  be  taken  with  great  reserve  ^  and  reduced  to 
very  slender  assertion.  Not  in  early  history,  not  even  in  the 
great  epics,  not  even  by  help  of  the  Homeric  question,  can 
one  study  communal  elements  to  the  best  advantage,  but 
rather  in  simple  ballads  of  tradition,  in  the  communal  narra- 
tive song.^  It  is  sung,  danced,  —  hence  the  rhythm  of  it ; 
it  tells  of  some  communal  happening  —  "  the  germ  of  folksong 
is  an  event,"  says  Bockel,"^  —  hence  the  narrative. 

1  Quellien,  Chansons  et  Danses  des  Bretons,  Paris,  1889,  p.  Ii,  notes  that  one 
event  is  not  likely  to  be  treated  both  in  the  song  and  in  the  tale :  "  ce  qui  est 
tombe  dans  le  domaine  de  la  narrative  prosaique  est  par  cela  meme  exclu  desormais 
de  la  chanson."  Communal  song  must  seize  present  things  ;  in  the  tales  it  was 
"  once  upon  a  time." 

2  Buckle,  Hisl.  Civ.  Engl.,  I.  Chap,  vi.,  calls  ballads  "  the  groundwork  of  all 
historical  knowledge,"  and  says  they  are  "  all  strictly  true  "  at  the  start.  The  use 
of  writing,  he  thinks,  put  an  end  to  their  value. 

^  This  traditional,  narrative  song  is  called  ballad  throughout  the  present  book, 
—  unfortunately  an  equivocal  term.  The  terminology  of  the  whole  subject  is 
notoriously  bad,  and  "  ballad  "  is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  See  Old  English  Bal- 
lads, pp.  xviii  ff. ;  Blankenburg,  Litterarische  Zusatze  u.  s.  w.,  I.  387  ff.,  under 
"  Dichtkunst  ";  for  modern  "  ballad,"  Werner  in  the  Anzeiger  fur  deutsches  Alter- 
thum,  XIV.  165  ff.,  190  f.,  XV.  259;  for  German  names,  Erich  Schmidt,  Charak- 
teristiken,  pp.  199  ff.;  on  balada,  Jeanroy,  Origines,  etc.,  p.  403,  who  shows  the 
passage  of  the  word  from  its  meaning  as  a  dance-song  to  the  technical  term  for  a 
fixed  form  of  verse.  In  Corsica  a  ballata  can  be  a  lament  (see  below  under 
vocero'),  and  derives  from  the  dance  round  a  corpse:  J.  B.  Marcaggi,  Les  Chants 
de  la  Mart,  etc.,  Paris,  1898,  p.  121,  note  on  the  caracolu,  "a  sort  of  pantomime 
danced  about  the  corpse  by  the  mourning  women,  with  gestures  of  grief,"  but  now 
fallen  out  of  use.  Of  course,  the  only  point  here  is  to  separate  the  ballad  from 
songs  like  Greensleeves,  from  journalism  (for  the  so-called  "ballad"  under  Eliza- 
beth shows  that  her  folk  were  as  anxious  to  get  into  print,  or  to  keep  out  of  it,  as 
we  are  in  days  of  the  newspaper),  from  occasional  poetry,  scurrilous  rimes,  hymns, 
and  all  the  rest.  "  Sonnet "  was  a  word  that  then  not  only  meant  any  short  poem, 
but  occasionally  made  a  little  competition  with  "ballad";  several  of  the  ballads  in 
the  Rawlinson  Collection,  Bodleian  Library,  are  called  "  sonnet "  either  by  title  or 
in  the  text. 

*  Work  quoted,  p.  Ixviii.  Critics  look  at  this  narrative  and  treat  it  as  the  only 
element  in  the  ballad;  but  at  every  turn  they  should  remember  that  the  original 
ballad  was  always  property  of  a  throng,  was  always  sung,  was  always  danced,  and 
was  never  without  a  dominant  refrain. 


1/6  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

What,  now,  are  the  tests  and  characteristics  about  which 
writers  on  the  ballad  are  agreed  ?  All  agree  that  it  is  a 
narrative  song  usually  preserved  by  oral  tradition  of  the 
people.  With  few  and  unimportant  exceptions,  it  is  agreed 
that  a  ballad  must  be  the  expression  and  outcome  of  a  homo- 
geneous and  unlettered  community ;  ^  the  dispute  is  about 
origins.  Grimm  and  sundry  of  his  day  declared  that  the 
community  itself  made  the  ballad ;  Grundtvig  said  the  same 
thing,  and  Ten  Brink,  following  certain  modifications  of 
Steinthal,  held  the  people,  and  not  an  individual  poet,  respon- 
sible for  the  making  as  well  as  the  singing.  Ferdinand 
Wolf^  was  sturdy  enough  in  his  scorn  for  the  "nebulous 
poet-aggregate  called  folk,"  although  he  clung  to  the  homo- 
geneous community  as  absolute  condition  ;  and  his  task  was 
to  find  a  representative  who  could  make  the  ballad  to  express 
such  a  community.  Since  ballads  deal  mainly  with  knights 
and  persons  of  rank,  he  concluded,  as  Geijer  had  done,  that 
they  were  due  to  "  a  person  of  quality  "  ;  Prior,  the  translator,^ 
went  even  a  step  farther  and  was  inclined  to  think  that  for 
Scandinavian  ballads,  and  presumably  other  poems  of  the 
class,  one  is  indebted  "to  the  ladies."  Prior  is  negligible. 
But  Wolf  was  careful  in  his  statement ;  and  when  he  noted 
the  predominance  of  aristocratic  persons  in  the  deeds  which 
these  ballads  sing,  he  knew  that  it  was  a  common  trait  in  all 
heroic  and  early  epic.  Germanic  poems  of  this  class,  the 
Banviilf,  the  Hildebrand  Lay,  what  not,  regard  only  such 
characters  and  not  the  common  man.  As  Dr.  R.  M.  Meyer 
points  out,  this  is  even  carried  into  the  lifeless  world,  and  all 
things  are  in  superlative  ;  all  is  splendid,  unusual,  extreme.  * 

1  Even  Kleinpaul,  sarcastic  enough  against  Grimm,  implies  this  condition  in 
his  nine  characteristics  of  popular  poetry :  Von  der  Volkspoesie,  published  anony- 
mously, i860,  and  as  supplement  to  his  Poetik,  1870.     See  p.  29. 

2  Introduction  to  Rosa  Warrens's  Schwedische  Volkslieder,  p.  xix. 

*  Ancient  Danish  Ballads,  i860,  I.  ix. 

*  Allgermanische  Poesie,  p.  118.     See  also  p.  52. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         177 

Even  Icelandic  sagas  deal  only  with  the  representative  man, 
with  distinguished  and  notable  folk.^  So  Wolf  simply  said 
that  the  ballad  was  made  in  this  class  of  society,  in  a  homo- 
geneous class,  a  volk  vo7i  rittcrn  as  he  calls  it,  ^  who  mainly 
"sang  their  own  deeds,"  —  an  important  concession.  Even 
if  one  granted  this,  and  allowed  the  court  poet  himself  to 
appear  in  an  impersonal  way  as  deputy  of  the  knights  in 
singing  about  their  deeds,  it  would  still  be  far  from  individual 
and  deliberate  poetry  of  art,  but  rather  poetry  of  the  guild 
with  a  definite  theme,  traditional  form,  and  recurrent  phrases 
from  the  common  poetic  stock.^  However,  the  homogeneous 
and  unlettered  conditions  of  a  ballad-making  community  are 
in  themselves  enough  to  account  for  this  preference  of  rank ; 
the  knight,  chieftain,  warrior,  represented  his  folk,  and  was 
hardly  raised  above  them  in  any  intellectual  way.  Not  only 
were  all  the  members  of  a  community  consolidated,  at  first, 
against  hunger,  cold,  and  hostile  tribes,  the  primitive  homo- 
geneity of  the  horde,  but  even  later,  in  mediaeval  civilization, 
the  same  roof  often  covered  the  knight  and  his  humblest 
retainer,  the  same  food  fed  them,  and  both  were  marked  by 
the  same  standards  of  action,  the  same  habit  of  thought,  the 
same  sentiments,  the  same  lack  of  letters,  *  of  introspection, 
of  diversified  mental  employment.     Even  in  rural  England 

1  Heinzel,  "  Beschreibung  d.  island.  Saga,"  Sitzungsberichte,  Vienna  Acad., 
phil.  hist,  class,  1897,  p.  117. 

■■^  Said  of  the  Castilian  and  Aragonese  ballads  in  Wolf's  Proben  portug.  u. 
Catalan.  Romanzen,  Vienna,  1856,  p.  6.  Here,  too,  he  opposes  the  idea,  pres- 
ently to  be  considered,  that  ballads  are  degenerate  epic  or  romance. 

^  A  broader  account  of  the  origin  of  ballads  is  given  by  Comparetti,  Kaltiuala, 
pp.  282  f.  He  refers  them  to  the  romantic  and  chivalric  sentiment  of  the  late 
Middle  Ages  —  beginning,  say,  with  the  eleventh  century  —  which  passed  from  the 
*'  Romanic-Germanic  centre  of  Europe  "  into  various  tongues,  was  delivered  to 
oral  tradition  as  popular  verse,  spread  and  flourished  down  to  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, where  it  was  collected  as  romancero,  romanze,  kampevise,  ballad.  But 
Comparetti  neglects  the  communal  conditions. 

*  Of  course  it  was  the  revival  of  learning,  the  humanistic  spirit,  dividing  lay 
society  into  lettered  and  unlettered,  which  really  broke  up  the  communal  ballad. 
N 


178  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

such  conditions  lingered  long;  Overbury's  franklin  ^  "says 
not  to  his  servants,  Goe  to  field,  but  Let  us  goe ; "  and  at 
the  harvest  home,  where  old  songs  prevail  even  in  modern 
times,  there  is  "no  distinction  of  persons,  but  master  and 
servant  sit  at  the  same  table,  converse  freely  together,  and 
spend  the  remainder  of  the  night  in  dancing  and  singing,  on 
terms  of  easy  familiarity."  ^  How  this  state  of  things  is 
intensified  in  the  Highland  clan,  every  one  knows;  and  in 
going  back  to  the  horde  there  can  be  no  doubt  in  regard  to 
the  sharp  curve  toward  communal  conditions  and  communal 
expression.  Now  as  to  those  aristocratic  personages  of  the 
ballad,  the  canticles  of  love  and  woe  which  come  from  such 
a  community  would  of  course  put  in  the  foreground  of  action 
persons  who  actually  filled  the  foreground  of  its  life.  The 
ballad  represented  a  compact  communal  life,  and  this  passed 
into  song  in  the  person  of  its  best  representative ;  hence  the 
panegyric  found  in  all  early  poetry,  the  praise  of  great  men 
who  are  made  one  with  "the  fathers  who  begat  us,"  not  to 
be  explained  away  as  work  of  Scherer's  primitive  minstrel, 
liar  and  entertainer  passing  about  his  hat  for  primitive  pence. 
It  is  with  modern  conditions  of  life,  and  with  the  diversity  of 
modern  thought,  that  art  comes  down  to  the  middle  classes,  — 
what  throes  were  needed  to  bring  the  domestic  or  citizen 
tragedy  to  light !  —  then  to  the  artisan,  to  peasants,  and  finally 
to  the  outcast,  the  criminal,  the  degenerate,  as  in  sundry 
clever  sketches  of  Alexander  Kielland.  Homogeneous  con- 
ditions are  first  broken  by  cities,  and  linger  longest  in  the 
country ;  they  were  particularly  strong  in  primitive  agricul- 
tural life  ;  ^  and  it  is  in  communities  of  this  sort,  remote,  islanded 
in  the  sea  of  civilization,  that  most  of  the  traditional  ballads 


1  Characters,  "  A  Franklin." 

2  Branrl-Ellis,  under  Harvest  Home.     The  "  mell-supper,"  may  not  derive  its 
name  from  mes/er,  as  suggested,  but  the  fact  is  clear  enough. 

*  (Irosse,  /'ormen  der  Familie,  pp.  134  f. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         179 

have  been  found.  When  one  thinks  of  this  poetry  at  its  best 
estate,  one  must  have  the  old  continent  and  not  these  sinking 
islands  before  one's  thought.  Nor  is  the  lowest  form  of 
culture,  degraded  and  sordid,  even  when  of  this  homogeneous 
kind,  to  be  taken  as  model  for  the  past.  One  is  loath  to 
think  of  the  old  ballad  community  in  terms  of  Zola's  Terre. 
There  is,  however,  another  way  by  which  one  could  account 
for  aristocratic  personages  and  doings  of  the  ballad  ;  this  way- 
side strolling  muse  may  be  dressed  in  the  clothes  cast  off  by 
her  high-born  sisters  of  epic  and  romance.  This,  as  was  said 
above,  F.  Wolf  ^  denied ;  but  J.  F.  Campbell  ^  defines  the  bal- 
lad somewhat  in  such  terms.  Mr.  Newell^  thinks  the  folk- 
tale a  degenerate  form,  in  low  levels  of  culture,  of  something 
composed  on  higher  levels  and  at  an  earlier  time ;  as  if  once 
D'Urberville,  now  Durbeyfield.  Often  true  for  the  material 
of  an  individual  ballad,  this  is  not  true  of  its  real  elements, 
of  the  ballad  qua  ballad,  and  of  its  form  and  vital  character- 
istics.    The  pattern  of  ballads  whence  one  will ;  *  the  stuff  of 

^  Proben,  etc.,  p.  6,  as  above,  and  also  p.  31. 

2  Popular  Tales  of  the  West  Highlands,  new  ed.,  IV.  114  ff. 

*  Proceedings,  Internat.  Folk-Lore  Congress,  1891,  p.  64. 

*  Even  in  the  material  itself  there  is  a  shading  from  highly  artistic  down  to 
communal.  Thomas  Rymer  undoubtedly  comes  from  a  romance.  The  Boy  and 
the  M^antle  has  the  flippancy  of  its  origin  in  the  fabliau  ;  Jeanroy,  Origines,  p.  155, 
declares  such  a  touch  of  the  cynical  to  warrant  one  in  taking  the  ballad  out  of  that 
class  which  he  calls  popular.  J^ing  Orfeo  is  a  distorted  tale  from  the  classics. 
Plain  kin-tragedies,  however,  like  Babylon,  Edward,  The  Twa  Brothers,  are 
simple  enough  for  one  to  leave  them  to  communal  origins,  and  not  go  source- 
hunting.  Even  where  the  motive  seems  international,  details  may  be  home-made ; 
how  much  of  Hero  and  Leander  is  left  in  that  Westphalian  ballad,  Et  wasen  tivei 
Kutinigeskinner  ?  This  story  of  the  lovers  and  the  lighted  taper  is  found  in  many 
folksongs.  See  Reifferscheid,  Westfdlische  Volkslieder,  pp.  127  ff.  In  the  classics 
and  modern  poetry,  —  witness  Musseos  and  Marlowe,  —  it  belongs  to  art.  Com- 
parative mythology  laid  hold  of  it,  followed  it  back  to  India,  and  from  India  to 
the  skies, —  spring-god,  sea,  stars,  autumn  storms,  and  the  rest.  But  this  is 
needless  bewilderment  of  a  plain  case ;  we  have  only  to  deal  with  the  way  in  which 
Westphalian  peasants  sing  of  prince  and  princess.  In  three  stanzas  the  story  is 
told;  all  the  rest  deals  with  the  situation  so  given,  and  here  the  communal  elements 
(see  below,  p.  196)  come  in.     The  point  is  that  study  of  subject-matter  in  ballads 


l8o  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  ballad  is  communal.  If  the  ballad  as  a  form  of  poetry 
were  a  mere  ragbag  of  romance,  one  would  find  in  it  tags  of 
old  phrases,  ambitious  figures,  tricks  and  turns  of  speech, 
change  in  metrical  structure,  and  all  manner  of  crumbs  from 
the  literary  table  ;  but  these  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence. 
The  ballad  as  ballad  is  original.  Count  Nigra  ^  gives  an  im- 
portant reason  for  this  point  of  view  when  he  notes  that  the 
materials  of  a  ballad  go  anywhere,  pass  all  borders,  while 
metre,  rime,  and  form  in  general,  are  borrowed  only  from 
popoli  omoglotti.  The  ballads  employ  speech  at  first  hand, 
no  borrowed  phrases,  a  simple,  living  language ;  and  always 
the  feeling  and  the  expression  are  coordinate.  The  ballad  is 
no  foul  and  spent  stream  that  has  turned  millwheels,  run 
through  barnyards,  and  at  last  found  its  way  to  a  ditch ;  it  is 
wild  water,  and  not  far  from  its  source  in  the  mountains. 
One  proof  lies  in  the  drinking  of  it.  Ballads  still  hold  their 
own  as  the  nearest  approach  to  primitive  poetry  preserved 
among  civilized  nations,  scanty  as  the  records  are ;  and  after 
infinite  discussion  of  Homeric  and  other  theories,  the  ballad 
remains  in  its  old  position  at  the  gates  of  every  national  liter- 
ature.^ The  farther  one  comes  into  the  conditions  which 
made  for  the  ballad,  this  homogeneous  community,  this  un- 
lettered and  undeliberative  habit  of  mind,  so  much  wider  one 
finds  diffused  the  power  of  improvising  and  singing  verses 
in  a  style  which  is  easy  to  bring  into  line  with  the  style  of 
traditional  ballads.  For  the  ballad  in  its  purity  was  always 
sung,  and  singing  is  a  primary  process ;  romances  were  re- 
is  distinct  from  the  study  of  ballad  elements.  These  are  constant  in  good  ballads, 
whether  the  subject  be  borrowed,  or  be  local  history,  as  in  Bessy  Bell  and  Alary 
Gray,  and  the  Border  ballads  generally.  In  addition  to  the  studies  of  ballad 
migration  (e.g.  Sir  Aldingar)  by  Grundtvig  and  by  Child,  see  a  close  piece  of 
investigation  by  Professor  Bugge,  "  Harpens  Kraft,"  in  the  Arkiv  for  Nordisk 
Filologi,\U.  (i89i),97ff. 

1  In  his  introduction  to  the  Canti  Populari  del  Piemonte,  p.  xviii. 

2  On  the  chasm  between  ballads  of  the  collections  and  the  recorded  beginnings 
of  national  literatures,  see  Old  English  Ballads,  p.  Ixxi. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         l8l 

cited.  In  other  words,  power  to  make  poetry  of  this  sort  does 
not  begin  with  the  rich  and  foremost  few,  and  spread  slowly 
among  the  lower  classes ;  it  begins,  this  is  beyond  all  doubt,^ 
as  a  universal  gift,  and  only  with  the  rise  of  classes  and  the 
diversity  of  mental  training,  lettered  against  unlettered,  is  the 
power  restricted  to  a  narrow  range. 

Well,  the  ballad  as  species  is  no  making  of  mediaeval  aristo- 
crats, ladies  or  knights,  no  shards  of  chivalry  and  romance  ; 
but  what  of  the  minstrel  ?  Bishop  Percy,  Scott,  and  of  late 
Professor  Courthope  and  Mr.  Henderson,  have  looked  to  the 
minstrel  to  explain  the  ballad  and  all  its  ways.  Doubtless 
many  a  minstrel  made  ballads,  or  rather  sang  them  into 
modern  shape ;  but  the  minstrel  is  merely  a  link  between 
later  artistic  poetry  and  older  communal  song.  He  cannot 
explain  this  communal  song,  for  he  cannot  explain  the  ele- 
ments of  it,  —  festal  crowd,  dance,  singing,  rapid  and  univer- 
sal improvisation,  repetition,  refrain ;  he  inherits  what  these 
leave  as  they  vanish  from  living  poetry ;  and  that  is  all.  He 
does  not  explain  them,  but  they  explain  him.  Professor 
Child  distinguishes  between  the  "  minstrel  ballad  "  and  the 
"popular  ballad  ";2  but  one  is  willing  to  hand  over  better 
stuff  to  this  amiable  rover  and  allow  him  a  share  in  many 
good  songs,  without  prejudice  of  any  kind  to  the  real  com- 
munal theory.  Gustav  Meyer,  however,  one  of  the  ablest 
scholars  that  modern  Germany  has  produced,  puts  ^  the  wane 
of  balladry  at  the  point  where  improvisation  by  men  and 
women  in  the  fields  and  round  the  village  linden  ceases,  and 
where  the  minstrel  brotherhood,  whether  blind  singers,  rhap- 
sodes, or  what  not,  begins.*  The  minstrel  ballad  is  only  a  stage 
on  that  broad  road  which  ends  in  the  stalls ;  while,  conversely, 


^  See  below,  under  Improvisation. 

*  See  remarks  on  "Crow  and  Pie,"  Ballads,  IL  478. 
^  Essays,  pp.  309  f. 

*  See  appendix  on  minstrels  in  the  author's  Old  English  Ballads. 


l82  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

a  ballad  of  the  stalls  may  often  hide  real  poetry  of  tradition 
under  an  ignoble  garment.  It  is  clear,  then,  that  the  "  I  "  of 
a  ballad  ought  to  disturb  the  idea  of  communal  origins  as  httle 
as  the  borrowed  subject  does  ;  but  when  one  forgets  the  sing- 
ing, dancing,  improvising  crowd,  and  thinks  of  poetry  only  in 
terms  of  modern  literary  composition,  inference  is  made  that 
ought  not  to  be  made  at  all.  Professor  Francke,^  for  exam- 
ple, thinks  that  the  "  I  "  of  a  German  folksong,  or  that  tag 
at  the  end  which  declares  the  song  to  have  been  made  by 
a  student,  a  pilgrim,  a  fisherman,  is  proof  positive  that  ballads 
had  individual  authorship.  The  song  is  a  folksong,  he  says, 
simply  and  solely  because  folk  take  it  up  and  sing  it ;  thus 
the  often  quoted  Limburg  Chronicle  noted  that  "this  year" 
the  folk  sang  so-and-so,  and  all  men  know  that  in  1898  the 
American  "  folk  "  sang  by  preference  There  II  be  a  Hot  Time. 
B5hme,^  indeed,  thinks  that  a  leprous  monk  ^  mentioned  in 
the  Limburg  Chronicle,  whose  tunes  and  songs  had  such  a 
vogue  five  hundred  years  ago,  brings  to  light  the  secrets  of 
the  origins  of  popular  poetry.  It  is  odd,  however,  that 
Bohme  goes  on  to  show  how  popular  poetry  differs  from  the 
poetry  of  art,  and  asks,  with  great  na'iveti,  why  one  should 
ever  ask  for  the  author  of  a  folksong,  seeing  that  it  was  never 
really  composed  at  all!  "It  was  a  masterless  and  nameless 
affair,"  he  says  ;  and  proceeds  to  quote  —  Jacob  Grimm.     But 

1  Social  Forces  in  German  Literature,  p.  117.  Talvj  draws  similar  conclusions : 
Charakter.,  etc.,  pp.  339,  405. 

-  Altdeutsches  Liederbuch,  p.  xxii.  The  personal  theory  is  much  more  temperately 
set  forth,  and  with  a  better  idea  of  throng-conditions,  by  Jeanroy,  Origines,-^.  396. 

^  This  leprous  monk  has  been  a  godsend  to  the  writers  on  ballad  origins.  But 
one  might  as  well  appeal  to  the  ego  in  a  passage  from  Thomas  Cantipratensis, 
written  near  Cambrai,  in  1263,  and  often  quoted:  Quod  autem  obscoena  carmina 
finguntur  a  daemonibus  et  perditorum  mentibus  immittuntur,  quidam  daemon 
nequissimus  qui  .  .  .  puellam  nobilem  .  .  .  prosequebatur,  manifeste  populis 
audientibus  dixit :  "  Cantum  hunc  celebrem  de  Martino  ego  cum  coUega  meo  com- 
posui  et  per  diversas  terras  Galliae  et  Theutoniae  promulgavi "...  Here  are 
individual  authorship  —  or  collaboration :  "I  and  a  colleague  of  mine,"  says  the 
demon,  —  aristocratic  origins,  and  Prior's  lady  in  the  case. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         183 

for  serious  answer,  it  is  plain  that  folksong  is  an  equivocal 
term.  Most  of  the  popular  songs,  by  their  nature,  must  be 
individual ;  the  universal  appeal,  the  fact  that  all  the  world 
loves  a  lover,  does  not  make  them  communal.  It  was  a  lad 
and  a  lover  who  sang  Innspriick ,  ich  muss  dick  lasseji ;  and  it 
needs  no  signature.  But  from  this  ich  to  the  "  I  "  of  the  tags 
which  one  finds  at  the  end  of  narrative  ballads  of  tradition, 
is  a  far  cry ;  indeed  there  is  a  gulf  between  them.  When 
one  comes  to  the  refrain,  which  always  expresses  or  implies 
a  "  we,"  there  is  absolutely  no  chance  for  "  I  "  ;  but  writers 
on  ballads  give  the  refrain  a  wide  berth.  However,  leave 
this  refrain  out  of  the  reckoning ;  even  in  actual  ballads  the 
"  I  "  is  oftenest  a  mere  recorder's  signature,  and  simply  medi- 
ates between  the  reader  and  communal  origins.  With  most 
Enghsh  and  Scottish  ballads  there  is  no  "  I  "  in  the  case  ;  but 
even  if  one  could  find  for  each  and  all  of  these  ballads  signs  of 
such  a  singer,  editor,  recorder,  there  would  still  remain  behind 
this  "  I  "  certain  facts,  certain  elements,  which  demand  a 
totally  different  explanation.  Let  us  look  at  another  declara- 
tion of  authorship.  A  Breton  song,^  called  The  Good  Old 
Times  and  sung  by  workingmen,  ends  with  these  verses  :  — 

This  song  was  made  on  the  eve  of  Lady  Day  after  supper. 

It  was  made  by  twelve  men  dancing  on  the  knoll  by  the  chapel. 

Three  are  ragpickers  ;  seven  sow  the  rye  ;  two  are  millers. 

And  so  it  is  made,  O  folk,  so  it  is  made,  and  so  it  is  made,  this  song ! 

Suppose,  on  the  other  side  of  the  account,^  one  should  pro- 
claim this  as  a  great  find  to  offset  the  leprous  monk ;  here,  by 
explicit  statement,  is  a  ballad  made  by  twelve  labourers  of  one 

1  Villemarque,  Barzaz-Breiz,  Paris,  1846,  II.   285.     Le    Temps  Passe  begins 

P-  273- 

2  Or  suppose  one  should  pin  the  ego  folk  to  a  belief  in  the  statement  found  in 
so  many  ballads  that  they  are  written  by  the  person  of  whom  they  sing !  This 
statement  is  a  favourite  in  Basque  songs.  See  F.  Michel,  Le  Pays  Basque, 
pp.  320  f. 


l84  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

mind,^  here  is  the  communal  song,  —  and  so  forth  !  But  the 
statement,  interesting  as  it  is,  does  nothing  for  any  theory  of 
authorship ;  what  concerns  one  here  is  the  evident  dance,  the 
folk  assembled,  the  knoll  by  the  chapel,  the  repetition,  and  the 
refrain,  which  is  more  prominent  in  other  parts  of  the  long 
ballad  :  in  a  word,  the  communal  elements.  Let  us  hear  what 
these  elements  really  are.  "  Sb,"  runs  Villemarque's  note 
to  this  ballad,  "  so  the  mountain  folk  sing,  Iiolding  one 
another  by  the  hand,  and  continually  snaking  a  half-circle 
from  left  to  right,  then  right  to  left^  raising  and  drop- 
ping their  hands  in  concert  to  the  cadence,  and  leaping 
after  the  fashion  of  the  ritor?tello."  In  fact,  as  Villemarque 
had  already  said  in  his  preface,  "  the  greater  part  of  these 
songs  and  ballads  of  the  people  are  made  in  the  same  way. 
Conversation  stirs  the  throng  to  excitement ;  '  let  us  make 
a  dance-song  ! '  cries  some  one,  and  it  is  done.  .  .  .  The 
texture,  due  to  the  general  mood,  has  unity,  of  course,  but 
with  a  certain  variety  of  parts.  Each  one  weaves  in  his  flower, 
according  to  his  fancy,  his  humour,  his  trade."  This  mat- 
ter will  be  regarded  more  closely  under  the  head  of  Im- 
provisation ;  but  the  gemeinsames  dichten  is  a  fact,  and  the 
communal  background  is  cleared  of  at  least  a  part  of  the  haze 
which  hides  it  from  modern  view.  In  any  case,  these 
signatures  ^  prove  nothing  either  way  ;  one  must  go  below  the 
surface  and  behind  the  signature,  if  one  will  come  at  the 
differencing  qualities  of  communal  poetry.  Once  more  be  it 
said  that  the  present  object  is  not  to  assert  communal  author- 

1  Or  take  the  Schloss  in  Oeslerreich :  — 

War  ist,  der  uns  dies  Liedlein  sang? 

So  frei  ist  es  gesungen; 
Das  haben  gethan  drei  Jungfraulein 

Zu  Wien  in  Oesterreiche. 

2  Compare  the  dance  and  singing  of  the  Botocudos,  above,  p.  95. 

3  No  one  now  pretends  that  "  Expliceth,  quod  Rychard  Sheale,"  at  the  end  of 
the  Ms.  of  the  old  Cheviot  ballad,  makes  Sheale  the  author  of  it. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         185 

ship,  in  any  literal  sense,  for  the  ballad  of  the  collections, 
but  to  show  in  it  elements  which  cannot  be  referred  to  indi- 
vidual art,  and  which  are  of  great  use  in  determining  the 
probable  form  and  origins  of  primitive  poetry.  True,  one 
might  go  farther ;  there  are  some  strong  statements  made  by 
scholars  of  great  repute  which  definitely  deny  individual 
authorship,  in  any  modern  sense,  for  the  ballad.  Bockel,^ 
speaking  of  more  recent  ballads,  rejects,  of  course,  the 
theory  of  Grimm,  but  makes  the  ballad  spring  from  impro- 
visation of  a  stanza  or  so  in  connection  with  traditional 
stanzas  of  the  communal  stock.  That  one  ballad  has  one 
author,  and  is  made  in  the  way  of  modern  composition  of 
poetry,  Bockel,  who  has  studied  the  remains  of  rustic  bal- 
ladry with  great  care  and  thoroughness,  denies  again  and 
again.  Count  Nigra,  in  the  work  just  quoted,  is  very  emphatic 
on  this  point.  "  This  popular  narrative  song,"  he  says,  "  is 
anonymous.  //  is  not  improvised  by  a  popular  poet  more  or 
less  known."  It  requires  "  a  period  of  incubation,  upon  which 
follows  a  long  elaboration,  which  goes  on  with  divers  phases 
and  changes,  until  the  song  falls,  little  by  little,  into  obHvion, 
or  else  is  fixed  in  the  record."  All  popular  verse,  he  declares, 
like  language,  "is  a  spontaneous  creation,  essentially  racial. "^ 
M.  Gaston  Paris,  too,  would  not  lay  much  stress  upon  the 
**  I  "  of  a  ballad  ;  early  popular  poetry,  he  asserts,^  is  "  impro- 
vised and  contemporaneous  with  its  facts  "  ;  and  such  songs* 
are  not  only  "  composed  under  the  immediate  impression  of 
the  event,  but  by  those  and  for  those  who  have  taken 
part  in  it."  In  line  with  evidence  to  be  set  forth  below, 
he  ^  cares  little  for  the  professional  minstrels  as  a  source  of 

1  Work  quoted,  p.  Ivii.     The  implied  protest  against  Grimm,  p.  Ixxxii,  must 
be  read  along  with  the  passage  just  cited. 

2  "  Una  creazione  spontanea  essenzialmente  etnica." 

3  Histoire  Poetique  de  Charlemagne,  p.  2. 
*  Romania,  XIII.  617. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  603. 


l86  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

early  popular  song,  and  doubts  their  existence  among  the 
primitive  Germans ;  for  the  skill  to  make  and  sing  verses  was 
as  common  then  as  the  skill  to  fight,  and  warriors  sang  the 
songs  which  they  themselves  had  made.^ 

But  there  is  not  only  this  negative  evidence  to  dispose  of 
the  "  I  "  in  ballads.  Hebrew  poetry  has  been  thought  to  touch 
the  highest  individual  note  in  the  "  I  "  of  the  Psalms ;  but 
the  best  Hebrew  scholars  ^  now  accept  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent  the  notion  that  in  many  places,  if  not  in  all,  this  "  I  " 
is  communal,  and  means  the  house  or  congregation  of  Israel. 
Smend^goes  so  far  as  to  take  the  "I"  throughout  in  this 
sense,  and  doubtless  he  goes  too  far ;  Budde  *  is  on  safer 
ground.  But  the  consent  of  the  best  scholars  is  that  "  I " 
often  means  the  community,  and  this,  so  Smend  insists,  not 
as  a  deliberate  "  personification  "  of  Israel  as  a  church,  but  in 
the  unconscious  and  communal  spirit  of  a  homogeneous  and 
intensely  emotional  body  of  people.  So  the  Greek  chorus, 
not  simply  the  leader  but  the  whole  chorus,^  speak  often  as 
"  I "  ;  and  Smend  quotes  a  stanza  to  the  same  effect  from 
Horace's  Carmen  ScBculare.  It  is  clear  that  one  is  on  the 
traces  of  a  primitive  habit  which  seems  impossible  to  us  only 
because  we  have  no  homogeneous  conditions  to  bring  about 

1  HisL  Po.  Charl.,  p.  ii. 

2  Driver,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the  Old  Testainent,  p.  389,  sums  up 
for  a  modified  acceptance  of  this  theory.  It  seems  clear  that  some  of  the  Psahns 
are  distinctly  individual  in  every  way,  and  as  clear  that  many  others  are  congre- 
gational and  communal. 

3  "Ueber  das  Ich  der  Psaimen,"  Zeifschriftfiir  die  alttestamentliche  Wissenschaft, 
VIII.  ("1888),  49-148.  Against  him  in  toto  is  Dr.  Robertson,  The  Poetry  and  the 
Religion  of  the  Hebrews,  1898.     See  pp.  20  ff.,  260  ff. 

*  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile,  p.  198. 

5  Robertson's  objection  to  this  is  trivial  (work  quoted,  p.  283),  and  shows  a 
total  lack  of  insight  into  the  conditions  of  old  communal  song.  "  It  is  becoming 
more  and  more  plain,"  says  Donovan,  Zy/Y  to  Muse,  p.  162,  "that  individuals 
could  have  had  little  to  do  with  forming  the  fashions  and  manner  of  Hebrew  song." 
It  sprang  from  the  choral  dance  of  the  people,  which  later  times  called  "  idola- 
trous." 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENT  187 

such  a  state  of  mind.  Now  and  then  a  hint  is  gained  from 
some  survival,  however  faint,  of  these  conditions.  It  is  said 
that  a  Scot  of  the  Border  coming  home  to  find  his  house 
plundered,  could  tell  by  sundry  signs  what  hostile  band  had 
done  the  deed,  and  would  invariably  call  them  by  the  place 
where  they  lived  :  "  Ettrickdale  has  been  here  !  "  One 
thinks  of  the  tribes  of  Israel  and  of  the  way  in  which  their 
names  were  used.  Reuben,  runs  the  text,  "  Reuben  had 
great  searchings  of  heart."  But  here  is  theological  ground, 
and  we  hasten  back  to  the  "  I  "  of  folksong.  To  this  subject 
Professor  Steenstrup  devotes  the  third  chapter  of  his  book  on 
Scandinavian  ballads,^  which  are  mainly  heroic  and  strongly 
objective,  in  contrast  to  the  more  subjective  and  deliberate 
ballads  of  Germany.  Now  many  of  the  Scandinavian  ballads 
begin  with  the  familiar  phrase,  "  I  will  sing  you  —  or  tell  you 
—  a  song,"  and  proceed  in  the  second  stanza  with  actual  nar- 
rative ;  a  comparison  of  manuscripts,  however,  shows  that  it 
is  mainly  late  copies  which  begin  with  this  "  I  "  stanza,  while 
earher  copies  omit  it.  In  English  ballads  the  "  I  "  is  quite 
as  separable  and  negligible  ;  sometimes,  in  songs  and  catches, 
it  is  used  for  mystification  :^  — 

He  that  made  this  songe  full  good, 
Came  of  the  northe  and  of  the  sothern  blode, 
And  somewhat  kyne  to  Robyn  Hood,  — 
Yit  all  we  be  nat  soo. 

And  the  refrain  follows.  In  the  Gest  of  Robin  Hood,  and  in 
the  other  ballads  of  this  cycle,  "  I,"  that  is  to  say,  the  singer, 
now  bids  hearers  "  lithe  and  Hsten,"  or  throws  in  an  aside  or  a 
gloss,  —  "I  pray  to  God  woo  be  he,"  about  the  "  great-headed 
monk " ;  with  which  compare  the  delightful  ejaculation  in 
Young  BeicJian,  "  And  I  hope  this  day  she  sail  be  his  bride," 

1  Fore  Folkeviser  fra  Middelalderen,  Copenhagen,  1 891,  an  admirable  book. 
See  particularly,  p.  39;  also  Talvj,  Charakteristik,  p.  340. 

2  Wright  and  Halliwell,  Reliquiae  Antiquae,  \.  248  f. 


l88  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

—  now  notes  the  end  of  a  canto,  as  in  the  Cheviot,  "the  first  fit 
here  I  fynde  "  ;^  and  makes  other  detached  and  aUen  remarks 
of  the  sort.  In  Russian  ballads,  as  Bistrom  ^  points  out,  the 
singer  addresses  his  hearers  only  at  the  beginning  and  at  the 
end,  often  not  at  all.  Evidently,  here  is  a  mere  singer  and 
recorder,  a  link  between  the  old  singing  and  dancing  throng 
and  the  new  Hstening  throng ;  in  no  case  is  he  a  maker,  so 
far  as  traditional  ballads  go,  and  in  Scandinavian  ballads 
Steenstrup  has  proved  him  to  be  an  impertinence.^  This  is 
said  with  due  allowance  for  the  functions  of  a  leader  in  com- 
munal dance  and  song,  where  the  "  I  "  little  by  little  got  his 
foothold  and  his  importance ;  he  steps  forward  with  uplifted 
beaker  and  begins  a  new  movement,  singing  a  subjective 
verse  or  two,  then  effaces  himself  from  the  narrative  ballad 
which  now  goes  with  the  dance.*  "  I  bid  you  all  dance," 
he  cries,  "and  we  will  sing  of  so-and-so."  This  introductory 
stanza,  of  course,  has  got  into  the  ballad  ;  and  the  lyric  open- 
ing of  many  a  ballad,  often  touching  on  the  time  of  year,  the 
place,  what  not,  and  often,  too,  of  great  beauty,  is  in  most 
cases  to  be  referred  to  such  an  origin.  When  the  ballad  is 
recited,  the  leader  turns  recorder,  editor,  improver,  commen- 
tator, improvising  bard.  That  damnable  iteration  in  long- 
winded  epics  and  romances  and  in  later  ballads,  "  this  is  true 
that  I  tell  you,"  belongs  to  the  reciting  stage ;  ^  it  is  an  alien 

^  Sc.Jine,  —  finish,  end? 

2  Zeitschrift  f.  Volkerpsych.,  V.  201.     He  notes  a  curious  close  found  in  many 

Danube !     Danube ! 
Thou  shall  sing  no  more. 

3  The  opening  or  close  of  Germanic  epic  is  often  of  this  "  I  "  character.  So 
the  Hildebrand  Lay,  the  Beowulf,  the  Nibelungefilied  at  its  end.  Later  epic 
shows  a  poet  in  the  case,  who  has  his  own  wares  to  announce.  See  R.  M. 
Meyer,  Altgermanische  Poesie,  pp.  357  ff.,  and  his  references. 

*  Steenstrup,  work  quoted,  pp.  43,  28  f. 

^  Often  the  reciter  remarks  that  it  is  night;  that  he  is  tired,  thirsty;  let  the 
hearers  come  again  on  the  morrow  and  each  one  bring  a  coin  with  him, —  and  so  on. 
See  A.  Tobler,  Zeitschr.  f.  Volkerspsych.,  IV.  175,  quoting  from  Huon  de  Bonieaux. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         189 

in  balladry.  More  than  this,  it  is  to  be  pointed  out  that  his- 
torical ballads,  meant  to  be  recited  and  not  sung,  are  no 
ballads  at  all  in  the  communal  sense. ^  They  are  on  the  way 
to  epic,  and  no  better  study  of  this  process  can  be  made  than 
in  the  Gest  of  Robin  Hood. 

So  much  for  the  absence  of  any  direct  trace  of  personal 
authorship  in  the  ballad.  It  is  strange  to  see  critics  going 
everywhere  to  fetch  a  reason  for  this  fact,  except  to  the  most 
obvious  place  to  find  a  reason,  —  in  the  singing  and  dancing 
throng,  where  at  least  the  elements  of  a  ballad  were  made. 
The  subjective,  the  reflective,  the  sentimental,  are  character- 
istics impossible  in  throng-made  verse.  Even  now  when 
throngs  are  to  be  pleased,  say  in  the  modern  drama,  there  is 
a  strange  mixture  of  communal  bustle  and  "situation"  with 
those  sentimental  ditties  meant  to  touch  the  private  heart. 
Such  a  play  is  a  monstrosity,  to  be  sure,  sheer  anarchy  of 
art ;  but  in  its  formless,  purposeless  racket  it  hits  communal 
taste  and  excites  the  Dionysian  sense,  until  the  crowd  is  shout- 
ing, leaping,  and  singing  by  deputy.  Going  back,  now,  to 
the  active  throng,  and  to  the  ballad  which  in  many  ways 
represents  that  throng,  let  us  see  what  communal  elements 
are  to  be  noted  in  its  diction,  its  form,  and  its  surroundings. 
The  diction  of  a  traditional  ballad  is  spontaneous,  simple, 
objective  as  speech  itself,  and  close  to  actual  hfe.    The  course 

1  It  was  noted  that  the  Botocudos  had  no  legends,  no  song  of  the  past.  A  nar- 
rative song  in  the  legendary  sense  is  unknown  to  primitive  folk;  what  they  sing  is 
the  event  of  the  day,  an  improvised  song  of  sentences  almost  contemporary  with 
the  facts,  cadenced  by  the  communal  dance.  The  sense  of  time  past  is  so  slender 
even  among  North  American  Indians  (Powell,  First  Annual  Report  of  Bureau  of 
Ethnology  to  Smithsonian  Inst.,  1881,  pp.  29  ff.),  that  while  they  admit  that  grass 
grows,  they  "  stoutly  deny  that  the  forest  pines  and  the  great  sequoias  were  not 
created  as  they  are."  Now  this  primitive  trait  of  poetry  is  preserved  in  com- 
munal ballads;  and  from  this  strictly  communal  class,  long  historical  ballads,  like 
those  in  German  collections,  should  be  excluded.  Kogel,  Geschichte  der  deutschen 
Litteratur,  I.  iii,  notes  that  "the  epic  song  ...  is  one  of  the  later  kinds  of 
poetry.  ...  It  cannot  even  be  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  common  Germanic 
stock."     But  the  communal  narrative  song  is  another  matter. 


IQO  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

of  artistic  poetry,  as  was  shown  in  the  preceding  chapter,  is 
away  from  simplicity  of  diction  and  toward  a  dialect.  Accord- 
ing to  the  temper  of  the  time,  this  dialect  of  poetry  will  be 
broadly  conventional,  as  with  Waller,  Dryden,  and  Pope,  nar- 
rowly conventional,  as  in  the  puzzle  style  of  the  Scandinavian 
scaldic  verse  and  in  certain  mannerisms  of  Tennyson,  or 
individual,  as  with  Tennyson  in  his  main  style  and  with 
Browning ;  but  in  any  case  it  will  be  a  good  remove  from  the 
speech  of  daily  life.  True,  certain  features  of  both  primitive 
and  ballad  poetry  seem  to  make  against  this  assertion.  Dr. 
Brinton  ^  says  that  all  the  American  languages  which  he  ex- 
amined had  a  poetic  dialect  apart  from  that  of  ordinary  life ; 
but  these  records  are  clearly  not  of  the  communal  type,  not 
spontaneous,  but  rather  fossil  forms  and  ceremonial  rites. 
Peasants  in  France,  so  Bujeaud  notes,  compose  few  ballads  in 
their  patois ;  Hebel  pointed  out  the  same  fact  for  German 
song; 2  and  there  is  other  evidence.  But  this  is  no  objection 
whatever  to  the  theory  of  ballad  simplicity ;  for  as  these 
writers  concede,  peasants  do  make  their  improvised  songs, 
their  couplets,  schnaderhiipfl,  nindds,  songs  of  labour,  songs 
of  feasts,  in  their  own  dialect  and  in  nothing  else.  The  tra- 
ditional songs  are  often  retained,  as  refrains  or  the  like, 
in  incomprehensible  or  difficult  phrase ;  but  that  is  another 
matter,  and  so  far  as  one  deals  with  communal  elements,  so 
far  one  finds  simple  and  everyday  speech,  entirely  different 
from  the  conventional  or  individual  dialect  of  the  poetry  of  art. 
Lack  of  simplicity  is  held  to  be  a  proof  of  false  pretences,  of 
forgery.  More  than  this.  The  ballads  lack  figurative  lan- 
guage and  tropes ;  they  rarely  change  either  the  usual  order 
of  words  or  the  usual  meaning.  They  lack  not  only  antithesis, 
but  even  the  common  figure  of  inversion,^  the  figure  which 

'  "  On  American  Aboriginal  Poetry,"  Proc.  Numismat.  and  Antiquar,  Soc. 
Philadelphia,  1887,  p.  19. 

^  See  Rockel,  work  quoted,  cxix. 

•''  Steenstrup  has  some  good  remarks  on  this  point,  work  quoted,  pp.  188  ff., 
203  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         191 

one  would  most  expect  to  meet  in  ballad  style.  In  the  bal- 
lad itself,  inversion  is  vanishingly  rare,  and  in  the  refrain, 
significant  fact,  it  is  as  good  as  unknown.  Again,  any  wide 
word,  any  mouth-filling  phrase,  even  such  a  term  as  "  father- 
land," which  opens  a  glimpse  into  the  reaches  of  reflection 
and  inference,  is  alien  to  the  ballad  of  the  throng.  Now  it 
is  significant  that  this  lack  of  tropes,  characteristic  of  ballads 
no  less  than  their  stanzaic  form,  sunders  them  from  our  old 
recorded  poetry  ;  earliest  English  poetry  is  a  succession  of 
metaphoric  terms.^  All  Germanic  verse,  in  fact,  laid  main 
stress  upon  the  trope  known  as  "  kenning  "  ;  the  ocean  is  the 
"  whale's  bath,"  the  "  foaming  fields,"  the  "  sea-street " ;  a  wife 
is  "  the  weaver  of  peace  " ;  so,  in  endless  variation,  the  poet 
called  object  and  action  by  as  many  startling  names  as  he 
could  find  in  tradition  or  invent  for  himself.^  Like  the 
recurring  phrase  of  the  ballad,  these  are  often  conventional 
terms  ;  but  they  differ  in  quality  from  it  by  a  world's  breadth. 
For  the  mark  of  this  trope,  in  its  deliberate  or  conscious  stage,^ 
is  a  palpable  effort  of  invention,  a  refusal  to  catch  the  nearest 
way  ;  the  ballad  is  rarely  figurative.  What  figures  one  does  find 
in  it,  and  they  are  few  enough,  are  unforced  and  almost  uncon- 
scious. As  Steenstrup  says,  the  Scandinavian  ballad  "  talks 
like  a  mother  to  her  child,"  and  has  "scarcely  a  kenning." 
Faroe  and  Icelandic  ballads,  to  be  sure,  have  a  few  kennings, 


^  Of  far  earlier  date  than  ballads,  this  poetry  is  in  a  later  stage  of  evolution. 
Widsi^,  the  oldest  recorded  English  poem,  shows  more  art  and  more  poetic  dialect 
than  many  a  bit  of  Scottish  verse  picked  up  a  century  ago. 

^  See  R.  Heinzel,  Ueber  den  Stil  der  altgermanischen  Poesie,  Strassburg,  1875; 
W.  Bode,  Die  Kenningar  in  der  angehdchsischen  Dichtung,  Darmstadt  u.  Leipzig, 
1886;  R.  M.  Meyer,  Altgermanische  Poesie.  See  too  Uhland,  Klein.  Schrift.,  I. 
390. 

^  A  kenning,  with  many  branches  in  Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  calls  survivors  of 
battle  "the  leavings  of  weapons."  This  may  once  have  been  literal;  but  in  its 
context  it  looks  as  deliberate  as  Lamb's  phrase  for  a  resuscitated  victim  of  the 
gallows,  —  "  refuse  of  the  rope,  the  leavings  of  the  cord"  {Inconveniences  Resulting 
from  Being  Hanged'), 


192  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

but  they  are  not  frequent.  J.  F.  Campbell  ^  speaks  of  the 
simple  Gaelic  ballads  as  poor  in  figures,  while  the  epic  made 
from  these  lays  riots  in  trope.  The  ballad  hardly  essays  even 
personal  description.^  A  modern  Greek  song  ventures  no 
farther  than  the  conventional  comparison  of  the  maiden  with  a 
partridge  ;  and  no  English  ballad  undertakes  to  give  a  picture 
of  the  heroine,  —  only  a  traditional  epithet  or  so.  The  heroes 
are  fair  or  ruddy,  have  yellow  hair;  and  that  is  all.  There 
is  no  realism,  as  one  now  calls  it.  Minute  description  of 
nature  increases  in  direct  ratio  to  the  increasing  individuahty 
of  the  poet ;  and  one  distrusts  those  German  folksongs  which 
bring  the  sunset,  or  a  fading  leaf,  or  more  subtle  processes  of 
nature,  into  line  with  the  singer's  feeling,  —  a  trait  of  German 
minnesang.  One  will  search  ballads  in  vain  for  a  superb 
touch  like  that  word  for  the  disturbing  sunrise  which  Wol- 
fram puts  into  the  watcher's  call  to  the  lovers,  "  his  claws 
have  struck  through  the  clouds,"  —  as  if  a  bird  of  prey  to  rob 
them  of  their  love  ;  ^  for  in  the  ballads  nature  is  a  background 
and  rarely  gets  treatment  in  detail.  Save  in  chronicle  song 
like  the  Cheviot,  it  is  spring,  summer,  evening,  it  is  the  green- 
wood, no  more  definite  time  or  place  ;  and  so  too  it  is  bird  or 
beast,  not  a  special  kind,  until  conventional  rose  and  lily 
and  deer  and  nightingale  come  to   their   monopoly.     It  is 

1  Pop.  Tales,  IV.  152. 

"^  The  general  testimony  for  all  ballads.  For  example,  Fauriel,  Chants  Popu- 
laires  de  la  Grece  Moderne,  I.  cxxix ;  these,  he  says,  are  full  of  commonplaces  and 
recurrent  phrases;  the  diction  is  "simple,  nervous,  and  direct,  that  is,  it  has  few 
figures,  almost  no  inversions,  and  progresses  in  short  periodic  and  nearly  equal 
passages."  Remains  of  oldest  Greek  folk  song  show  the  same  traits:  Usenet, 
Aligricch.  Versbau,  p.  45. 

^  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach,  ed.  Lachmann,  p.  4. 

Sine  klSwen 

durh  die  wolken  sint  geslagen, 

cr  sttget  flf  mit  grozer  kraft, 

ih  sih  in  grSwen  .  .  . 

den  tac  .  .  . 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         193 

not  communal  verse,  but  poetry  of  art,  which,  without  mytho- 
logical intent,  transfers  a  distinctly  human  motive  to  nature, 
as  where  Romeo  sees  those  "envious  streaks  "  in  the  east,  or 
where,  in  the  Beowtilf,  old  Hrothgar  describes  the  abode  of 
Grendel,  with  that  picture  of  the  hounded  stag,  and  with  the 
"  weeping  "  sky.  In  the  ballads,  reference  to  nature  is  con- 
ventional, though  by  no  means  insincere.  Though  the  natural 
setting  is  often  an  irrelevancy,  as  in  Lady  Isabel:  — 

There  came  a  bird  out  o'  a  bush 

On  water  for  to  dine, 
And  sighing  sair,  says  the  king's  daughter, 

"  O  wae's  this  heart  of  mine,"  — 

still,  there  are  touches  of  nature,  sincere  and  exquisite  and 
appropriate,  to  be  found  in  sundry  ballads,  notably  at  the 
opening  of  Robm  Hood  and  the  Monk}  However,  ballads  are 
mainly  for  the  action,  not  the  setting  of  the  stage,  and  a 
throng  of  festal  dancers  would  not  care  for  a  bill  of  particulars. 
It  is  the  poet,  fugitive  from  throngs,  who  turns  to  nature  and 
studies  her  charms  with  a  lover's  scrutiny. 

On  the  other  hand,  what  ballads  lack  in  figurative  and 
descriptive  power,  they  supply  in  an  excess  of  iteration,  of 
repetition,  of  fixed  and  recurring  phrases.  The  recurring 
phrase,  along  with  the  standing  epithet,  one  finds,  to  be  sure, 
in  the  great  epic  as  well  as  in  the  ballad  of  tradition ;  repeti- 
tion in  the  simpler  sense,  however,  is  peculiar  to  the  ballads. 
Epithets  in  the  ballad  are  of  a  modest  type ;  the  steed  is 
"milk-white"  or  "berry-brown,"  the  lady  is  "free,"  —  that 
is,  "noble,"  —  while  now  and  then  an  adjective  cleaves  to 
its  substantive  in  defiance  of  fact,  as  when  the  "  true-love  " 

1  This  may  well  go  back  to  the  summer  songs,  May-day  songs,  chorals,  and  so 
on,  of  festal  crowds;  so  Bielschowsky,  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Dorfpoesie^  Berlin, 
1891,  p.  13,  concludes  for  the  songs  of  Neidhart.  So,  too,  with  songs  on  the  con- 
flict of  summer  and  winter.  Latin  poets  of  the  Middle  Ages  led  the  way  in  regular 
description  of  nature.  See  Wilmanns,  Walther,  p.  409.  For  the  general  case, 
Burckhardt,  Cultur  d.  Renaissance,  II.  15;  Uhland,  Klein.  Schrift.,  III.  388,  469. 
o 


194  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

is  palpably  false,  or  when  the  newborn  infant  is  called  an 
"auld  son."  As  for  the  phrases,  when  a  little  foot-page 
starts  off  with  his  message,  when  two  swordsmen  fall  to 
blows,  when  there  are  three  horses,  black,  brown,  and  white, 
to  be  tested,  any  reader  of  ballads  can  shut  his  eyes  and 
repeat  the  two  or  three  conventional  lines  or  even  stanzas 
that  follow.  Of  course,  as  poetry  grows  artistic,  recurring 
phrases  vanish ;  the  artist  shuns  what  is  traditional  and 
evident,  seeking  to  announce  by  independence  and  freshness 
of  phrase  the  individuality  of  his  own  art.  Tobler  notes  that 
while  the  more  communal  epic  of  old  France  used  the  same 
terms  and  the  same  general  apparatus  for  a  fight  here  and 
a  fight  there,  Ariosto  contrives,  however  one  fight  is  like 
another,  to  give  an  individual  character  to  each. 

To  say  that  these  recurring  phrases  are  due  to  the  need  of 
the  improvising  singer  for  a  halting-place,  a  rest,  in  order  to 
think  of  new  material,  is  distortion  of  facts.  Undoubtedly 
the  minstrel  used  these  traditional  passages  for  the  purpose, 
but  they  are  due  to  the  communal  and  public  character  of 
the  poetry  itself,  and  belong,  so  far  as  the  question  of  origins 
is  concerned,  to  that  main  fact  in  all  primitive  song,  the  fact 
of  iteration.  This  is  now  to  be  studied  not  so  much  in  the 
actual  recurrence  of  identical  passages,  as  in  that  character- 
istic of  ballad  style  which  may  be  called  incremental  repeti- 
tion. One  form  of  this  is  where  a  question  is  repeated  along 
with  the  answer,  a  process  radically  different  from  that  of 
Germanic  epic,  where  the  zeal  for  variation  has  blotted  out 
this  primitive  note  of  repetition,  and,  against  all  epic  pro- 
priety, forced  a  messenger  to  give  his  message  in  terms  quite 
different  from  the  original.  Again,  each  slight  change  in 
the  situation  of  a  ballad  often  has  a  stanza  which  repeats 
the  preceding  stanza  exactly,  save  for  a  word  or  two  to 
express  the  change.       Lyngbye^  found   the   Faroe  ballads 

^  F(£r<piske  Qvaeder,  p.  74. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         195 

SO  laden  with  this  kind  of  repetition  that  in  the  record  he 
omitted  many  of  the  stanzas,  giving  them  all  only  here  and 
there,  to  show  the  general  style.  Side  by  side  with  incre- 
mental repetition,  which  is  usually  found  in  sets  of  three 
stanzas,  runs  a  refrain,  either  repeated  at  the  end  of  each 
stanza  or  sung  throughout  as  a  burden.  Moreover,  with  all 
this  iteration  goes  a  tendency  to  omit  particulars  and  events 
which  modern  poetry  would  give  in  full,  so  that  a  very  ill- 
natured  critic  might  define  ballads  as  a  combination  of  the 
superfluous  and  the  inadequate.  But  these  traits  can  best  be 
seen  in  an  actual  ballad,  Babylon,  or  tJie  Bonnie  Banks  of 
Fordie,  familiar  not  only  to  Britain,  but  "  to  all  branches  of 
the  Scandinavian  race."  ^  It  is  an  admirable  specimen  of  com- 
munal elements  and  traditional  form  blended  with  incipient 

art:  — 

There  were  three  ladies  lived  in  a  bower, 

Eh  vow  botuiie^ 
And  they  went  out  to  pull  a  flower 

On  the  botiftie  batiks  o'  Fordie.^ 

They  hadna  pu'ed  a  flower  but  ane, 
When  up  started  to  them  a  banisht  man. 

He's  taen  the  first  sister  by  the  hand, 

And  he's  turned  her  round  and  made  her  stand. 

"  It's  whether  will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife?"' 

"  It's  ril  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 

But  ril  rather  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife." 

He's  killed  this  may,^  and  he's  laid  her  by, 
For  to  bear  the  red  rose  company. 

He's  taken  the  second  ane  by  the  hand, 

And  he's  turned  her  round,  and  made  her  stand. 

1  Child,  Ballads,  I.  170. 

*  Refrain  or  burden,  not  printed  with  the  other  stanzas,  but  sung  throughout. 

3  Maid. 


196  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

"  It's  whether  will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife  ? " 

"  rU  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 

But  I'll  rather  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife." 

He's  killed  this  may,  and  he's  laid  her  by, 
For  to  bear  the  red  rose  company. 

He's  taken  the  youngest  ane  by  the  hand. 

And  he's  turned  her  round,  and  made  her  stand. 

Says,  "  Will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife?" 

"  I'll  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife. 
Nor  will  I  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife. 

"  For  I  hae  a  brother  in  this  wood, 
And  gin  ye  kill  me,  it's  he'll  kill  thee." 

"What's  thy  brother's  name?     Come  tell  to  me."  — 
"  My  brother's  name  is  Baby  Lon." 

"  O  sister,  sister,  what  have  I  done ! 
O  have  I  done  this  ill  to  thee ! 

"  O  since  I've  done  this  evil  deed, 
Good  sail  never  be  seen  o  ^  me." 

He's  taken  out  his  wee  pen-knife. 

And  he's   twyned  ^  himsel  o  his  ain  sweet  life.' 

1  Of  =  by. 

^  Deprived,  parted. 

3  The  incremental  repetition  of  this  ballad  could  be  matched  by  many  other 
cases.  Typical  is  the  combination  of  simple  and  incremental  repetition,  also  in 
triads,  at  the  end  of  a  French  ballad,  "  Sur  le  Bord  de  I'lle,"  Crane,  Chansons 
Populaires,  p.  28.  Typical,  too,  is  the  interesting  Westphalian  ballad,  already 
noted,  of  the  Hero  and  Leander  story:  Reifferschcid,  Westf.  VolksL,  pp.  2  f. ; 
see  ibid.,  Nos.  2,  5.  "Mother,  my  eyes  hurt  me,  —  may  I  walk  by  the  sea?"  — 
"  Not  alone ;  take  thy  youngest  brother."  Reasons  follow  against  and  for  this. 
Then  repetition :  my  eyes  hurt  me,  may  I  not  walk,  etc.  "  Take  thy  youngest 
sister,"  —  and  incremental  repetition  of  the  reasons.     Then  :  — 

"  O  mother,"  said  she,  "  mother, 

My  heart  is  sore  in  me; 
Let  others  go  to  the  churches, — 

I  will  pray  by  the  murmuring  sea." 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         197 

The  simple  "plot "  of  this  ballad  might  be  wrought  into  a 
long  romance  after  the  mediaeval  fashion,  might  be  made 
a  modern  drama,  a  modern  short  story,  —  Maupassant  tells 
something  of  the  sort  in  a  pathetic  but  repulsive  sketch  ; 
the  manner  of  Babylon,  however,  is  all  its  own,  carrying  one 
miles  from  romance  and  drama  and  tale  back  into  the  com- 
munal past.  Two  stanzas  open  with  the  ballad  commonplaces, 
—  ladies  in  bower,  the  conventional  summons  of  an  outlaw 
by  breaking  a  branch,  pulling  a  flower,  or  otherwise  disturb- 
ing the  peace,  and  his  appearance  on  the  scene.  Then 
comes  swift  action  ;  then  the  lingering,  fascinating  incre- 
mental repetition ;  then  the  crash,  and  the  leap  into  tragedy. 
True,  the  sudden  turns  and  the  lack  of  connecting  and  ex- 
plaining passages  are  less  marked  than  in  other  ballads,  say 
at  the  end  of  Child  Maurice,  where  the  almost  bewildering 
swiftness,  the  daring  omission,  roused  Gray  to  enthusiasm 
beyond  his  wont ;  ^  but  the  trait  is  evident  enough  and 
strong  enough,  even  here,  to  show  that  one  is  far  from  the 
garrulity  of    the  romances,^  far  from  the  forward-and-back 

Usually  each  increment  has  a  stanza,  but  now  and  then  compression  takes  place, 
as  in  Motherwell's  version  of  Sii-  Hugh  :  — 

She  wiled  him  into  ae  chamber, 

She  wiled  him  into  twa, 
She  wiled  him  into  the  third  chamber. 

And  that  was  warst  o't  a'  .  .  . 

And  first  came  out  the  thick,  thick  blood, 

And  syne  came  out  the  thin, 
And  syne  came  out  the  bonnie  heart's  blood  .  .  . 

So  with  three  horses,  and  what  not.  This  triad  is  not  necessarily  sprung  from 
the  "  Dreitheiligkeit  in  der  Lyrik,"  of  which  Veit  Valentin  discourses  in  the 
Zeitschr.f.  vgl.  Lit.  (New  Series)  II.  9  ff.  "  Dreitheiligkeit  in  der  Lyrik,"  comes 
rather  from  communal  iteration  in  primitive  song  and  dance. 

^  See  his  letter  to  Mason,  Works,  ed.  Gosse,  II.  36. 

"^  Professor  Earle  confuses,  in  a  very  uncritical  way,  the  garrulity  of  romances 
with  the  garrulity  of  epics  and  of  ballads :  see  his  Deeds  of  Beowulf,  p.  xlix.  A 
"voluble  and  rambling  loquacity,"  he  says,  is  the  "natural  character  of  the  lay, 
and  still  more  of  the  epic,  which  is  a  compilation  of  lays."     And  presently  he 


198  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

of  a  Germanic  epic.  It  is  not  to  be  explained  by  any  ab- 
breviation in  the  record.  Zell  long  ago  pointed  out^  that 
this  habit  of  leapings  and  omissions  is  characteristic  of  what 
may  be  regarded  as  the  remains  of  Hellenic  popular  verse. 
Like  the  ballad  repetition,  which  is  incremental,  the  ballad 
omission  is  progressive,  and  has  nothing  of  that  strain  and 
doubling  which  makes  Germanic  epic,  in  Ten  Brink's  phrase, 
spend  such  a  deal  of  movement  without  getting  from  the 
spot.  Yet  it  is  chiefly  in  the  incremental  repetition  that 
the  ballad  shows  its  primitive  habit  as  compared  with  the 
merely  retrospective  repetition  of  the  romances.  The 
ballad  stands  close  to  that  spontaneous  emotion  which  rises 
in  a  throng  and  relieves  itself  in  a  common,  obvious,  often 
repeated  phrase ;  it  stands  close  to  the  event,  and  hence 
the  abruptness,  the  process,  due  to  sight  at  close  quarters, 
of  immediate  expression.  The  aesthetic  value  of  repetition 
is  high  when  interest  is  held  and  concentrated  upon  a  single 
strong  situation,  as  in  Babylon ;  its  value  is  low  when  the 
action  is  a  trivial  sequence  of  details,  as  in  a  Russian  ballad 
quoted  by  Bistrom:^  "He  set  up  his  linen  tent;  when  he 
had  set  it  up,  he  struck  fire ;  when  he  had  struck  fire,  he 
kindled  [the  camp-fire]  ;  when  he  had  kindled,  he  cooked 
the  porridge  ;  when  he  had  cooked  the  porridge,  he  ate  it : 
when  he  had  eaten  it,  he  lay  down,"  —  and  so  on,  in  the 
strain  dear  to  children.^  Another  variety  of  incremental 
repetition,  which  brings  one  closer  to  the  conditions  under 
which  ballads  were  made,  is  found  in  the  account  of  Porthan  * 

says  that  the  romances  are  "  the  nearest  extant  representative  of  that  unwritten 
literature  which  from  the  very  nature  of  things  was  undisciplined  and  loquacious." 
Confusion  could  hardly  go  beyond  this. 

1  Fei'ienschriften,  I.  87. 

■•^  "Das  russische  Volksepos,"  Zeitschr.f.  Volkerpsych.,  V.  187. 

^  See  above,  p.  69. 

■^  See  Porthan,  Opera  Sehcta,  III.  305-381.  I  ([uote  from  the  original  disser- 
tations de  Poesi  Fennica  1778,  pp.  57  ff.  He  begins  by  lamenting  the  decay 
of  old  national  song  near  the  coast  and  under  clerical  influence;   intimates  that 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         199 

about  the  singing  of  Finnish  songs  by  a  leader  who  impro- 
vises, and  a  second  singer,  a  sort  of  echo,  a  dwindled  chorus, 
who  joins  him  and  helps  to  carry  the  ballad  along  its  way. 
The  leader^  sings  a  line;  but  before  he  comes  to  the  end 
of  it,  his  partner  catches  the  idea  and  joins  him  in  the  final 
measure,^  —  a  word  or  two ;  then,  while  the  other  is  silent, 
this  helper  repeats  the  whole  Hne,  often  with  a  slight  change 
of  words,  mainly  an  adverb  or  the  like  thrown  in, —  *'  surely," 
"  in  truth," — and  with  an  even  slighter  change  of  tone;  then 
the  leader  sings  another  verse,  the  helper  falls  in,  repeats, 
and  so  to  the  end  of  the  song.  The  two  sit  face  to  face  with 
clasped  hands,  and  round  them  are  the  people  arrectis  auribus. 
It  is  fair  to  conjecture  that  the  folk  were  not  always  silent 
hearers,  and  that  the  helper  is  deputy  of  a  choral  throng 
which  has  come  to  silence  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  superior 
art ;  ^  Porthan  admits  that  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  Finns 
were  once  able  to  make  these  ballads,  and  he  goes  on  to  tell 
of  the  universal  custom   of  the   women  to  improvise  little 

song  was  a  universal  gift  and  was  improvised,  although  sundry  bards  are  now  emi- 
nent. Memorable  events  slip  into  song,  now  convivial,  now  satiric;  and  there  is 
great  store  of  proverbs.     The  description  of  dual  singing  begins  with  §  XI. 

1  "  Prscentor,  Laulaja  .  .  .  adjungit  sibi  alium  socium  sive  adjutorem, 
PuoHaja  sive  Sahtaja  dictum." 

2  "  Quod  facile  jam  ex  sensu  ipso,  atque  metri  lege,  reliquum  pedem  conjec- 
tando  detinire  licet." 

3  "  Rarissimi  stantes  canunt ;  et  si  contingit  aliquando,  ut  musarum  quodam 
afflatu  moti  stantes  carmen  ordiantur,  mox  tamen,  conjunctis  dextris  sessum 
eunt,  et  ritu  solito  cantandi  continuant  operam."  They  observe  the  rules  of  the 
game.  Porthan,  to  be  sure,  notes  the  absence  of  dancing  as  a  national  and  per- 
vasive affair;  but  the  statement  must  not  go  unchallenged.  Long  before  this, 
Olaus  Magnus  {Hist,  de  geniibus  Septentrion.,  Roma,  1555,  Cap.  VIII.  lib.  IV. 
141)  said  of  the  Lappland  and  other  northern  folk  that  they  were  often  moved 
to  dance, — "excitentur  ad  saltum,  quem  vehementius  citharoedo  sonante  du- 
centes,  veterumque  heroum  ac  gigantum  prseclara  gesta  patrio  rhytmate  et  car- 
mine canentes,  in  gemitus  et  alta  suspiria,  hinc  luctus  et  ululatum  resoluti,  dimisso 
ordine  in  terram  ruunt,"  a  parlous  state.  Scheffer,  to  be  sure,  discredits  this 
statement  of  the  archbishop  {Lafponia,  1673,  p.  292);  but  Donner,  Lieder  der 
Lappen,  p.  38,  believes  it,  and  says  it  is  confirmed  by  the  report  of  a  recent  Rus- 
sian traveller. 


200  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

songs  as  they  grind  at  the  hand-mills.  The  trick  of  singing 
in  pairs  is  not  uncommon,  and  is  seen  elsewhere  upon  a 
historical  background  of  choral  song ;  Castren  says  that 
the  Samoyedes  improvise  their  magic  songs  in  the  same 
fashion,  a  conjurer  of  the  first  class  beginning  the  verse, 
and  joined  in  the  final  words  by  the  humbler  shaman,  who 
then  repeats  the  whole  alone.  The  song  consists  of  but  a 
few  words. 1  Similar  methods,  on  a  higher  plane,  are  found 
in  Denmark  and  Iceland.  Ethnological  evidence,  too,  is' 
at  hand  ;  in  Africa,  Captain  Clapperton  heard  two  singers 
sing  an  artless  ballad,  one  doing  the  verses,  the  other  the 
refrain.2  Often  two  dancers  lead  a  dance.^  It  is  only  a 
step,  moreover,  from  the  twain  with  clasped  hands,  to  the 
two  singers  of  a  flyting,  Eskimo  song  duels,  strife  between 
Summer  and  Winter,  amoebean  verse  of  all  kinds ;  see,  for 
example,  the  Carhn  and  little  boy  in  the  Swedish  ballad,  or 
Harpkin  and  Fin  in  the  English,^  where  one  verse  suggests 
the  reply  in  the  next.  From  these  to  the  schnaderhupfl, 
when  one  after  another  steps  out  and  sings,  and  so  back 
to  the  chorus,  as  in  Lyngbye's  case  of  the  Faroe  fisher,  is 
but  another  easy  inference ;  in  short,  it  is  clear,  by  over- 
whelming proof,  that  the  individual  performers  are  a  survival 
of  the  singing,  dancing  throng  with  its  infinite  repetitions 
and  its  unending  refrain. 

Still  another  form  of  incremental  repetition  will  occur  to 
the  reader  as  based  on  old  custom  but  bare  of  all  save  the 
rawest  aesthetic  ministrations,  and  nowadays  used  only  for 
jocose  ends.  The  same  line  or  stanza  is  sung  indefinitely, 
with  the  use  of  a  new  name,  number,  fact,  in  each  repetition ; 
or  else  the  repetition  is  cumulative,  a  test  of  memory,  some- 


^  Castren,  cjuoted  by  Comparetti,  Kalewala,  p.  66,  note. 
2  Talvj,  Charakteristik,  p.  87;   Steenstrup,  pp.  85  f. 
'  Ibid.,  pp.  23  f. 
*  Child,  Ballads,  I.  21. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL  ELEMENTS         201 

what  as  in  "  The  House  that  Jack  Built."  ^  There  is  a  Ger- 
man student  song,  still  popular,  where  the  names  of  those  pres- 
ent are  rimed,  one  after  the  other,  into  a  fixed  formula ;  while 
degenerate  and  silly  verses  of  one's  youth,  nursery  songs,^ 
counting-out  rimes  and  the  like,  will  occur  to  one  by  the 
dozen,  and  seem  less  negligible,  get,  indeed,  an  aesthetic  lift, 
when  one  finds  in  them  distinct  hints  of  some  old  incantation, 
some  choral  song  to  bless  house  and  field,  as  well  as  echoes 
from  the  dance  and  the  labour  of  primitive  man.  Counting- 
out  rimes  in  Germany  are  often  epic,^  with  a  spice  of  adven- 
ture, thus  working  into  ballad  territory ;  and  these,  as  with 
children's  games  at  large,  hold  to  the  dance.  F.  Wolf 
sunders  the  dramatic  dances  of  the  Catalan  peasantry,  with 
lives  of  saints,  battle  of  Christian  and  Moor,  robber  tales,  and 

1  See  "  Hans  Michel,"  and  the  notes  to  it  in  Reifferscheid,  Westjalische  Volks- 
lieder,  pp.  47,  175.  The  song  "  Driiben  auf  griiner  Haid,"  pp.  51,  176,  is  used  in 
the  spinning-room,  old  home  of  communal  minstrelsy,  to  stir  the  women  to  their 
work.  Further,  see  Coussemaker,  Chants  Pop.  des  Flamands  de  France,  p.  129, 
for  a  pious  chanson :  One  is  one,  One  is  God  alone,  One  is  God  alone,  And  that 
we  believe.  Two  is  two.  Two  Testaments,  One  God  Alone  .  .  .,  etc.  Three  is 
three,  Three  Patriarchs,  Two  Testaments  .  .  .  and  so  on,  up  to  the  Twelve 
Apostles.  Ibid.,  pp.  333,  336  ff.,  353,  are  comic  songs  of  the  kind;  and  these  are 
highly  important,  for  they  are  songs  of  the  dance,  and  still  in  vogue  for  communal 
processions.     Their  main  features  are  repetition  —  and  the  refrain. 

2  See  Halliwell,  Nursery  Rhymes,  p.  197  :  — 

John  Ball  shot  them  all. 
John  Scott  made  the  shot, — 
But  John  Ball  shot  them  all. 
John  Wyming  made  the  priming, 
And  John  Brammer  made  the  rammer, 
And  John  Scott  .  .  .,  etc. 

This  is  cumulative.  But  an  old  song  of  the  fifteenth  century  is  incremental,  a 
jolly  bit  of  verse  withal:   Wright-Halliwell,  Reliquiae  Antiquae,  I.  4  f. — 

The  fals  fox  camme  into  owre  croft, 
And  so  owre  geese  ful  fast  he  sought; 
Refrain:     With  how,  fox,  how,  with  hey,  fox,  hey, 

Comme  no  more  into  oure  house  to  here  owre  gese  awaye. 

The  fals  fox  camme  into  oure  stye  .  .  .,  etc. 
^  E.  H.  Meyer,  Deutsche  Volkskunde,  p.  124. 


202  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

so  on,  as  their  theme,  the  work  of  professional  singers,  from 
those  simple  dances  of  the  country  folk  and  of  the  children, 
some  of  which  are  of  the  type  now  under  discussion.  He 
gives  ^  a  pretty  little  incremental  specimen  of  this  latter  sort. 
But  labour  is  also  in  the  game.  In  Gottschee^  there  is  a  ballad 
of  a  servant  maid  who  served  one  year  and  earned  a  chicken  ; 
chicken  hatched  chickens :  served  second  year  and  earned 
a  duck ;  duck  stands  on  big,  wide  feet,  chicken  hatches 
chickens :  served  a  third  year  and  earned  a  turkey ;  turkey 
said  Long  Ears,  duck  stands,  and  so  on :  and  then  lamb,  kid, 
pig,  calf,  pony,  little  man  (the  husband)  who  says  Love  Me, 
and  finally  "a  youngster"  who  says  Weigh  Me,  —  and  then 
back  through  it  all  to  the  chicken.  This  is  sung  of  course  by 
the  girl ;  but  from  the  cumulative  song,  with  more  or  less 
refrain,  it  is  an  easy  step  to  the  choral  song  of  labour,  which 
is  naturally  incremental.  Such  is  the  song  ^  of  women  weed- 
ing the  millet,  which  combines  the  old  refrain  of  labour  in 
the  field  with  the  incremental  repetition  of  a  hardly  coherent 
ballad.  Prettier  is  that  song  *  which  the  playmates  of  a  bride 
sing  during  the  weaving  of  her  bridal  wreath. 

To-day  a  maiden  has  been  joyous,  — 
Joyous  she  now  nevermore  ; 
Joyous  surely  she  shall  yet  be, — 
But  as  maiden  nevermore. 

^  Prohen,  p.  34 :  "  La  Mina  de  Puigcerda." 

*  K.  L.  Schroer,  "  Eiu  Ausflug  nach  Gottschee,"  in  Sitzungsber.,  Vienna  Acad., 
phil.-hist.,  LX.  (1868),  165-288.  See  pp.231  ff.  One  is  distantly  reminded  of 
the  cumulative  song  (Chambers,  Popular  Rhymes  of  Scotland,  p.  35)  of  "  Katie 
Beardie,"  —  for  the  dance  :  — 

Katie  Beardie  had  a  coo, 
Black  and  white  about  the  mou'; 
Wasna  that  a  dentie  coo? 
Dance,  Katie  Beardie ! 

Katie  Beardie  had  a  hen,  — 
and  cock,  "  grice,"  so  on,  —  probably  as  many  animals  as  were  won  by  her  distant 
cousin   in  Gottschee.     See   also   the  "  Croodin   Doo,"  p.  51;    "My  Cock,  Lily 
Cock,"  p.  31;   "The  Yule  Days,"  p.  42;   and  others. 

8  Schroer,  p.  274.  *  Ibid.,  p.  277. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL  ELEMENTS         203 

To-day  a  maid  has  handed  garlands/  — 
Hand  them  shall  she  nevermore ; 
Hand  them  shall  she  surely  yet, — 
But  as  maiden  nevermore. 

The  third  stanza  simply  puts  "binding"  for  "handing." 
Here  is  the  incremental  repetition  along  with  the  fixed 
refrain, — not  a  very  difficult  communal  feat,  by  the  way, 
and,  as  in  all  these  cases,  getting  its  rhythm  from  the  work 
or  the  dance,  its  meaning  from  the  event  or  deed  in  hand. 
So,  too,  when  the  bride  goes  away,  she  is  again  besung,  and 
the  events  are  occasion  of  the  quite  contemporary  words ; 
thus,  as  she  is  lifted  upon  the  husband's  horse,  — 

She  is  seated,  she  has  sobbed  ! 
She  has  ridden  away,  she  laughed !  ^ 

The  better  known  collections  are  full  of  these  simple  cumula- 
tive songs,  which  it  would  be  superfluous  to  record.  In 
Algeria  women  sing  an  endless  song  of  the  sort  with  fixed 
refrain  and  incremental  stanza.  A  combination  of  the  count- 
ing-out rime  and  the  song  of  labour  is  found  in  many  places, 
for  example,  a  Gascon  ballad^  sung  by  women  as  they  wash 
clothes  and  beat  the  linen  in  cadence ;  the  feature  of  drop- 
ping a  number  with  each  new  stanza  reminds  one  of  those 
Ten  Little  Indians  of  one's  youth  :  — 

1  To  the  young  men  invited  thus  to  the  wedding. 

2  The  Armenian  bride  does  the  singing  herself,  combining  incremental  repeti- 
tion with  a  refrain  in  which  the  crowd  may  join  (Alishan,  Armenian  Popular 
Songs,  Venice,  1852:  the  third  edition,  1888,  omits  the  name  of  the  translator)  : 

Little  threshold,  be  thou  not  shaken; 
It  is  for  me  to  be  shaken, 
To  bring  lilies. 

Little  plank,  be  thou  not  stirred; 
It  is  for  me  to  be  stirred, 
To  bring  lilies. 

3  Blade,  Poesies  Populaires  de  la  Gascogne,  II.  220  ff.  In  the  Chants  Heroiques 
des  Basques,  p.  48,  Blade  tells  how  the  Basques  use  these  songs  of  number. 


204  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Nine  are  washing  the  lye, 

Nine. 
Nine  are  washing  it, 
Nine  are  rubbing  it, 
Pretty  Marion  in  the  shade, 

Pretty  Marion,  — 
Let  us  to  the  fountain  go. 

Then  "eight  are  washing,"  then  seven,  and  so  on,  one  woman 
dropping  out  at  each  break.  Again,  soldiers  on  the  march 
sing  the  interminable  song  of  increments  with  a  refrain  :  ^  — 

Ma  poule  a  fait  un  poulet, 
Filoiis  la  ro7ite,  gai,  gai, 
Filons  la  route  gaiment. 
Ma  poule  a  fait  deux  poulets  .  .  . 

Biicher  ^  traces  all  these  marching  songs  back  to  a  primitive 
form  such  as  one  still  hears  in  Africa,  where  "  for  hours  at  a 
time "  the  natives  on  the  march  keep  singing  a  half-dozen 
words  or  phrases  in  monotonous  repetition,  and  with  no  incre- 
ments. The  development  hence  through  incremental  stanzas 
up  to  the  Tyrtaean  lyric  of  battle,  verses  of  the  Chanson  de 
Roland,  and  so  on,  is  evident  enough.  Repetition  of  the  in- 
cremental and  cumulative  sorts,  moreover,  is  easily  connected 
with  religious  rites.  "It  seems  a  fair  inference,"  says  Mr.  E.  B. 
Tylor,^  "  to  think  folklore  nearest  its  source  where  it  has  its 

1  Ilnd,,  same  page.     Herd,  Ancient  and  Modern    Scottish  Songs,  I.  117  (re- 
print of  1869),  among  a  number  of  marches  more  or  less  artificial,  prints  a  chorus : 

Little  wat  ye  wha's  coming, 
Little  wat  ye  wha's  coming, 
Little  wat  ye  wha's  coming, 
Jock  and  Tam  and  a's  coming, 

to  which  an  indefinite  series  of  incremental  stanzas  can  be  added,  —  as:  — 

Duncan's  coming,  Donald's  coming, 
Colin's  coming,  I'lonald's  coming  .  .  . 

and  so  the  chorus,  and  again  another  stanza,  and  so  on.  A  different  kind  of 
song  for  the  march  is  "  Un  wenn  nude  Pott  en  Lock  hett,"'printed  byFirmenich, 
Germaniens  Volkerstimmen,  p.  187. 

*  See  his  references,  Arbeit  u.  Rhythmus,  p.  71. 

*  Primitive  Culture,  I.  86. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         20$ 

highest  place  and  meaning."  At  the  end  of  the  book  of  Pass- 
over services  used  by  modern  Jews,  as  Mr.  Tylor  and  others 
have  noted,  there  is  a  poem  which  curiously  resembles  the 
nursery  tale  of  the  old  woman  and  her  pig;  the  angel  of 
death  is  dignified  enough,  and  is  slain  by  the  Holy  One,  but 
cat  eating  kid,  dog  biting  cat,  and  so  on,  are  something  ludi- 
crous. Mr.  Tylor  thinks  all  this  the  original  of  the  nursery 
tale  itself.  Again,  in  the  same  book  there  is  a  solemn  count- 
ing poem  ;  one  is  God,  two  are  the  tables  of  the  covenant,  and 
so  on  up  to  thirteen,  when  all  is  reversed  in  order  back  to 
one.  Watchmen's  songs  counting  the  hours  will  occur  to 
every  reader.  Germanic  heathendom,  doubtless,  had  this 
counting  song  in  its  ceremonial  rites ;  ^  while  incremental 
repetition  in  the  charms,  that  oldest  form  of  recorded  poetry, 
is  often  found,  witness  the  highly  interesting  charm  against 
a  stitch  in  the  side,  or  rheumatism,  from  an  English  manu- 
script of  the  tenth  century ;  ^  here  are  not  only  the  recurring 
line  of  incantation,  and  the  epic  opening  usual  in  charms,  but 
a  trace  of  something  like  the  repetition  with  increments : 
"There  sat  a  smith  and  made  a  knife,"  and  again,  "six 
smiths  were  sitting,  warspears  working ; "  why  not  caetera 
desiuit  ? 

Repetition  is  not  an  invention  and  grace  of  artistic  poetry, 
as  the  books  are  fond  of  saying ;  it  is  the  most  characteristic 
legacy,  barring  rhythm,  which  communal  conditions  have 
made  to  art.  Its  artistic  expression,  in  which,  to  borrow 
Emerson's  phrase,  it  comes  back  to  the  passive  throng  "  with 
a  certain  alienated  majesty,"  no  longer  the  simple  iteration  of 
a  refrain  or  an  incremental  ballad,  takes  noblest  form  in  trag- 
edy and  monody,  shading  down  into  artifice,  however  effec- 

1  Tacitus,  Germania,  c.  lo.  Liliencron  u.  Miillenhoff,  Zur  Runenlehre,  Halle, 
1852.  Simple  iteration,  of  course,  is  everywhere  in  charms :  ier  dices  is  the  stage 
direction. 

2  Grein-Wulker,  Bibliothek,  I.  317  ff. 


206  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY 

tive,  in  Maeterlinck's  Princesse  Maleine  and  Pelleas  et  MM- 
sande  ^  where  it  almost  makes  rhythm  of  the  prose,  and  into 
clever  but  legitimate  tricks  in  Moliere's  famous  galh-e  passage 
and  in  his  other  passage,  almost  as  famous,  of  the  smis  dot. 
It  is  used  to  give  simple  effects;  probably  it  constitutes  the 
charm  of  Hiawatha,  as  well  as  of  that  imitated  ballad  by 
Hamilton,  the  Braes  of  Yarrow,  which  Pinkerton  ill-naturedly 
called  "  an  eternal  jingle."  We  may  therefore  divide  poetic 
iteration  into  two  great  classes,  —  one  natural  or  primitive, 
which  is  as  much  as  to  say  communal,  the  other  artistic,  with 
a  No  Man's  Land  or  Siberia  whither  one  banishes  the  artificial. 
This  artificial  iteration  of  poetic  style  is  perhaps  nowhere  so 
insistent  as  in  those  interesting  but  exasperating  oddities 
known  as  Greenes  Funcralls^  published  "  contrarie  to  the 
author's  expectation."  Of  course,  the  step  from  art  to  arti- 
fice is  not  too  obvious.  Every  one  knows  the  smoothness,  the 
fluidity,  as  Arnold  calls  it,  which  Spenser  gave  to  his  verse, 
often  by  this  delicately  managed  iteration  —  say  in  Astrophel ;  ^ 
Donne  softens  his  roughness  with  it  in  many  a  poem ;  but  it 
becomes  a  tiresome  trick  at  R.  B.'s  hands :  — 

Ah,  could  my  Muse  old  Maltaes  Poet  passe 
(If  any  Muse  could  passe  old  Maltaes  Poet), 

Then  should  his  name  be  set  in  shining  brasse, 
In  shining  brasse  for  all  the  world  to  show  it,* 

^  D'Annunzio,  following  Baudelaire,  revives  repetition  with  considerable  effect 
to  make  up  for  lack  of  rimes  in  his  Elegie  Romans.     See  p.  69,  "  Villa  Chigi." 

2  By  R.  B.  Gent.  (Barnfield?),  London,  1594,  a  rare  book.  See  Barnfield's 
own  Hellens  Rape,  ed.  by  Grosart  for  the  Roxburgh  Club,  1876. 

8  A  gentle  shepherd  born  in  Arcady, 
Of  gentlest  race  that  ever  shepherd  bore. 

No  small  influence  in  introducing  this  kind  of  repetition  is  due  to  the  imitations 
of  classic  verse,  and  the  struggles  of  the  Areopagus  to  expel  the  tyrant  Rime. 
Compare  Spenser's  own  experiment :  Now  doe  I  nightly  waste,  quoted  by  Guest, 
English  RhyiJims,  IT.  270. 

*  A  suspicion  that  R.  B.  is  japing  (see  his  Atnyntas :  A-mint-Asse,  in  the  4th 
of  the  fourteen  "  sonnets  "),  vanishes  with  careful  reading  of  these  highly  interest- 
ing "  experiments." 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         20/ 

and  it  grows  worse  than  tiresome  in  Gabriel  Harvey's  varia- 
tion of  the  ubi  sunt  theme  :  — 

Ah,  that  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  should  te  dead, 
Ah,  that  Sir  Philip  Sidney  should  be  dead. 
Ah,  that  Sir  William  Sakevil  should  be  dead, 

which  is  not  even  humorous.  Now  it  is  clear  that  classical 
models  play  a  part  here.  The  pastorals  of  Vergil,  the  itera- 
tion of  elegy  imitated  by  Milton  at  the  opening  of  Lycidas, 
are  to  be  reckoned  with ;  but  not  only  was  the  throng  behind 
all  this,  as  shall  be  seen  in  a  study  of  the  vocero,  not  only  are 
the  charming  iterations  and  incremental  touches  in  Catul- 

lus,i  — 

multi  ilium  pueri,  multae  optauere  puellae  .  .  . 
nulli  ilium  pueri,  nullae  optauere  puellae    .   .  . 

along  with  store  of  ordinary  repetition  and  a  refrain,  to  be 
placed  where  they  belong,  in  an  alternating  chorus  of  youths 
and  maidens,  with  distinctly  communal  background ;  but 
there  were  cases  in  early  English  where  the  classical  influ- 
ence is  slight,  and  the  song  of  a  swaying  mass  is  clearly  to 
be  heard :  ^  — 

Adam  lay  ibowndyn,  bowndyn  in  a  bond, 
Fowre  thousand  wynter  thowt  he  not  to  long ; 
And  al  was  for  an  appil,  an  appil  that  he  toke, 
As  clerkes  fyndyn  wreten  in  here  book. 
Ne  hadde  the  appil  take  ben,  the  appil  taken  ben, 
Ne  hadde  neuer  our  lady  aben  heauene  qwen. 

In  fact,  early  literature  is  full  of  repetition  which  suggests  a 
recent  transfer  from  the  dancing  and  singing  throng.  So 
even  the  mediaeval  clerk  ^  had  not  only  Latin  jingling  in  his 

1  Carm.  Ixii.  39  ff. 

2  Recorded  as  a  fifteenth-century  carol  in  the  Sloane  Ms. 

3  See,  however,  the  caution  uttered  by  M.  Jeanroy  against  the  idea  that  songs 
of  the  Carmina  Burana  represent  popular  poetry  (  Origines  de  la  Poesie  Lyrique 
en  France^  pp.  304  f.).     Ingenious  repetition,  whether  in  refrains  of  the  triolet 


2o8  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

head,  but  also  songs  of  the  country  folk  buzzing  in  his  ears ; 

and  it  is  no  classical  tone,  despite  the  tongue,  that  sounds  in 

his  — 

veni,  veni,  venias, 
ne  me  mori  facias, 

while  repetition  takes  a  more  artistic  form  in  the  vernacu- 
lar:  i  — 

Come,  my  darling,  come  to  me  ! 

I  am  waiting  long  for  thee : 

I  am  waiting  long  for  thee, 

Come,  my  darling,  come  to  me  ! 

Lips  so  sweet  of  red-rose  grain. 
Come  and  make  me  well  again  : 
Come  and  make  me  well  again, 
Lips  so  sweet  of  red-rose  grain  ! 

Incremental  repetition,  then,  as  it  is  found  in  traditional 
ballads,  lies  midway  between  two  extremes,  one  communal 
and  one  artistic.  Behind  it  is  the  indefinite  iteration,  un- 
changed, of  primitive  song ;  before  it  is  the  repetition  of 
artistic  parallelism  which  is  crossed  by  variation,  mainspring 

type,  or  in  the  Portuguese  type  represented  by  these  verses,  and  in  certain  other 
poems  of  artificial  construction  (Jeanroy,  p.  309)  :  — 

Per  ribeira  do  rio 
vy  remar  o  navio; 

et  sabor  ey  da  ribeyra  ! 

Per  ribeyra  do  alto 
vy  remar  o  barco; 
et  sabor,  etc. 

Vy  remar  o  navio 
by  vay  o  meu  amigo; 
et  sabor,  etc. 

Vy  remar  o  barco, 
hy  vay  o  meu  amado; 
et  sabor,  etc. 

are  probably  no  popular  making.     See,  however,  above,  p,  139,  the  folksong  of 
this  type. 

^  "  Chume,  chume,  geselle  mtn."     Carmina  Burana,  ed.  Schmeller,  pp.  208  f. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        209 

of  the  poetic  dialect.  Iteration  is  the  spontaneous  expression 
of  emotion,  and  begins  in  the  throng ;  it  lies  at  the  root  of  all 
rhythm,  cadence,  and  consent ;  variation  is  the  assertion  of 
art,  of  progress,  of  the  individual.  These  are  the  two  great 
elements  of  poetry.  Variation  could  take  place  in  two  ways. 
The  communal  singer  had  his  stock  of  communal  refrains 
and  the  like,  derived  from  tradition  of  the  singing  and  danc- 
ing throng ;  for  communal  purposes  he  could  have  added  his 
own  stanzas,  just  as  Burns  did  in  modern  days.     There  was 

the  chorus :  — 

Bonnie  lassie,  will  ye  go, 

Will  ye  go,  will  ye  go, 
Bonnie  lassie,  will  ye  go 

To  the  birks  of  Aberfeldy  ? 

To  this,  and  many  a  chorus  like  it.  Burns  added  his  own 
words.^  But  the  early  artists  who  worked  out  the  scheme 
of  national  poetry  went  about  their  task  by  a  different 
method.  Their  material  was  the  unchanged  repetition,  prob- 
ably in  couplets  corresponding  to  the  forward-and-back  of  a 
dance,  either  in  line,  like  some  children's  games  now,  or  in  a 
half  circle,  like  that  dance  of  the  Botocudos.  Out  of  this 
repetition  they  made  the  artistic  parallelism  found  alike  in 
Germanic  epic  and  in  Hebrew  psalms,  as  well  as  the  varia- 
tion which  Heinzel  has  so  neatly  compared  for  this  same 
epic  and  for  the  Sanskrit  hymn.  As  regards  Germanic  verse, 
Dr.  R.  M.  Meyer  2  notes  that  repetition  of  words  yielded  to 
the  necessity,  imposed  by  rigid  metrical  law,  to  take  a  syno- 
nym which  would  rime  with  the  principal  word,  thus  ending 
in  a  mass  of  kennings  or  verbal  variations.  It  is  clear  that 
the  strophic  ballad  is  based  upon  older  conditions,  as  is  proved 

1  See  also  R.  H.  Cromek,  Select  Scottish  Songs,  London,  1810,  L  14, — 
Saw  ye  my  Maggie  ? 

'^  Altgermanische  Poesie,  pp.  228  f.     See  also  Kluge,  in  Paul-Braune,  Beitrage, 
IX.  462  f. 


2IO  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

by  preceding  examples,  and  by  the  lack  of  variation  in  typical 
verses  such  as  this,  the  opening  of  a  pretty  dance-song :  ^  — 
La  rauschen,  lieb,  la  rauschen  ! 

The  rigid  structure  of  an  aUiterative  verse  calls  for  variation, 
not  repetition,  within  its  limits ;  variation  in  the  ballads  is 
incremental  and  close  to  actual  repetition,  being  forced  within 
a  stanza  only  by  the  exigencies  of  rime :  — 

O  where  hae  ye  been,  Lord  Randal,  my  son, 

O  where  hae  ye  been,  ;;//  handsome  young  man  ? 

The  refrain,  however,  could  hold  to  repetition  pure  and 
simple,  leaving  room  for  an  increment  of  considerable  effect 
at  the  climax ;  thus  in  the  same  ballad  of  Lord  Randal,  the 

refrain 

For  I'm  weary  wi'  hunting  and  fain  wad  lie  down, 

turns  at  the  end  to  — 

For  Pra  sick  at  the  heart  and  I  fain  wad  lie  down. 2 

Doubtless,  too,  variation  began  in  the  singing  before  it  was 
evident  in  the  record  ;  that  change  of  accent  which  editors 
claim  for  the  well-known  verses  :  — 

Sigh  n6  more,  Iddies,  sigh  no  m6re  .  .   . 
Weep  n6  more,  w6eful  shepherds,  w^ep  no  m6re 

may  have  had  its  counterpart  in  far  older  and  far  ruder 
verse  of  the  throng.     If  the  earliest  form  of  poetry  was  the 

1  Uhland,  Volkslieder,  I.  78. 

2  Variations  may  advance  the  sentence,  or  simply  hold  it;  thus  {Barzaz-Breiz) : 

Little  Azenor  the  Pale  is  betrothed,  but  not  to  her  lover, 
Little  Azenor  the  Pale  is  betrothed,  not  to  her  sweet  "  clerk; 

no  advance;   otherwise  in  a  refrain :  — 

Come  hearken,  hearken,  O  folk, 
Come  hearken,  hearken  to  the  song ! 

which  suggests  the  syntactic  structure  of  old  English  poetry  due  to  alliterative 
variation. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        211 

iterated  single  verse,  a  statement  of  a  fact,  or,  in  the  first 
instance,  a  fact  stated  not  formally  but  by  the  repetition  of 
words  in  a  rhythmic  period  which  was  itself  exactly  repeated, 
it  is  clear  that  the  progress  of  poesy  may  have  begun  by 
making  a  proposition  of  the  single  verse  and  then  proceeding 
to  add  some  new  elements  in  the  repetition  of  it.  Artistic 
skill  next  fell  upon  the  single  verse,  ^  fixed  its  cadence, 
curbed  its  repetition  by  syntactic  relations,  and,  as  in  Ger- 
manic poetry,  rang  the  changes  on  this  law  of  variation. 
Now  it  is  evident  beyond  all  doubt  how  great  a  part  incre- 
mental repetition  must  have  played,  and  it  is  also  evident 
that  this  can  be  studied  best  in  a  collocation  of  communal 
survivals,  like  the  ballads,  and  primitive  survivals,  such  as  are 
found  in  savage  songs.  Let  us  look  first  at  certain  songs 
which  belong  between  these  two  classes,  then  at  a  form  of 
verse  which  is  found  in  both,  and  finally  at  the  ethnological 
or  primitive  material. 

Radloff  2  collected  an  admirable  series  of  songs  and  ballads 
in  southern  Siberia.  Here  are  the  homogeneous  community, 
the  oral  and  traditional  verse,  and  the  slow  but  sure  ruin  ^  of 
both  due  to  importation  of  Mahometan  learning,  books  and 
poets ;  here  too  are  those  fashions  of  making  and  keeping  a 
song,  half  communal,  half  artistic,  which  yield  to  the  con- 
ditions of  written  poetry.  The  gregarious  song  still  lingers 
in  chorus  and  in  improvisations ;  while  individual  singers  are 

^  A  single  sentence  to  the  single  verse  is  indicated  in  all  primitive  poetry,  and 
is  still  the  rule  in  Russian  folksong:  Bistrom,  Zeitschr.  fur  Volkerpsy.,  V.  185. 
Progress  lay  both  in  intension  and  in  extension,  —  regulation  of  the  verse-parts, 
and  combination  of  verses  in  a  strophe.  For  example,  an  element  like  rime  or 
assonance  was  used  to  bind  verses  now  in  couplets,  now  in  a  series  like  the  old 
French  tirade. 

2  Proben  der  Volkslitteratur  der  turkischen  Stdtnme  Siid-Siberiens,  St.  Peters- 
burg, 1866  ff. 

3  Ibid.,  III.  xix.  See  above  on  the  closed  account.  Exotic  literature,  and  the 
mullas,  learned  poets,  Radloff  declares,  are  slowly  driving  out  folksong  of  every 
sort. 


212  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

working  free  from  the  throng,  and  are  diverting  the  old  broad 
current  of  repetition  into  channels  and  courses  of  art.  But 
this  individual  artist^  has  a  very  short  tether,  and  he  is  close 
to  the  community  not  only  in  fact  but  in  the  character  of  his 
work.  Improvisation  is  the  rule  ;  composition  of  the  deliber- 
ate modern  sort  is  almost  unknown.  Festal  throngs,  not  a 
poet's  solitude,  are  the  birthplace  of  poetry ;  and  the  folk,  if 
they  must  listen  and  may  not  sing  in  chorus,  choose  a  pair  of 
singers  to  compete.  "  Some  one  present  steps  forward  and 
challenges  to  a  flyting.  If  no  one  appears  in  answer,  the 
challenger  sings  improvised  stanzas  making  fun  of  the  people 
before  him ;  but  if  a  match  is  made  up,  then  the  two  wage 
their  duel  in  song  until  one  fails  to  respond,  loses  the  game, 
and  gives  a  present  to  his  conqueror."  As  with  the  Faroe 
islanders,  so  here  on  the  Tartar  steppes,  and  on  the  slopes 
of  the  Altai,  if  these  rival  songs  show  conspicuous  merit, 
they  are  remembered,  repeated,  and  sung  as  traditional 
ballads.^  Radloff  has  several  instances.  A  girl  who  enters 
such  a  flyting  with  a  young  man  named  Kosha,  now  flouts,  now 
praises,  and  finally  —  another  world-old  trick  of  traditional 
song  —  falls  into  a  series  of  riddles.  What  was  first  created, 
—  who  was  so-and-so's  father,  ^  —  when  do  the  waters  freeze  .'* 
Kosha  answers  them  all ;  the  girl  gives  up,  and  presents  him 
with  a  coat.  Another  pretty  flyting  *  is  also  between  youth 
and  maid ;  the  girl  holds  her  own  until  the  boy  says  he  has 
wounded  her  brother,  whereupon  she  sits  down  and  weeps. 

1  For  a  study  of  the  artistic  side  of  this  improvised  song,  see  Chap.  VIII. 
Here  the  communal  conditions  are  to  be  emphasized,  and  the  basis  of  unvaried 
repetition  is  to  be  inferred. 

2  Radloff,  III.  34,  note;   41. 

8  Compare  Ilildebrand  in  the  older  lay,  bidding  his  son  Hathubrand  put  him  to 
the  test  of  genealogies :  — 

"  ibu  dd  m{  enan  sages,  ik  mt  de  odre  uuet, 
chind,  in  chunincrtche :  child  ist  mt  al  irmindeot." 

*  Radloff,  III.  48  f. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        213 

In  all  these,  and  in  the  solitary  improvisations,  there  is  con- 
stant repetition.  Two  verses  of  a  challenge  —  all  go  by 
quatrains  —  are  repeated  in  the  answer;  while  in  the  con- 
tinuous ballad,  song  oscillates,  as  Ten  Brink  says  of  this  stage 
in  the  development  of  poetry,  between  memory  and  improvisa- 
tion, production  and  reproduction.  The  singer  has  a  mass  of 
verses  in  his  head,  and  puts  his  own  thought  only  into  the 
third  and  fourth  lines  of  a  quatrain,  ^  the  first  and  second 
coming  from  the  common  stock.  That  is  the  recurrent 
passage,  the  "ballad  slang";  but  actual  repetition,  in  its 
incremental  phase,  is  stronger  here  than  in  any  poetry  on 
record  except  that  of  the  Finns.  A  fine  example  of  this 
repetition  and  variation  is  in  the  Kangsa  Pi,  one  of  the 
historic  songs ;  ^  mostly  the  stanzas  are  interlaced  in  pairs. 
Often  the    changes   are    mere  emphasis,  not  progress ;    for 

example :  — 

If  I  had  a  white  hawk, 

He  would  scream  behind  me ; 
If  I  had  relatives  on  my  father's  side, 

They  would  follow  behind  me. 

If  I  had  a  blue  hawk, 

He  would  scream  behind  me ; 
If  I  had  relatives  on  the  Old  One's  side, 

They  would  follow  behind  me. 

These  changes  of  colour,  variation  on  hard-and-fast  lines, 
are  very  frequent  and  often  inappropriate,  as  with  a  white 
horse  and  a  blue  horse ;  ^  one  form  of  the  change  is  not  far 
remote  from  a  Germanic  kenning  :  — 

^  The  so-called  Oelong,  with  rime  or  assonance.  Ibid.,  III.  xxii.  The  quatrain, 
as  Usener  points  out  in  his  AUgriechischer  Versbau,  seems  to  have  been  the 
favourite  measure  for  popular  verse. 

2  Ibid.,  I.  218  ff. 

2  White  and  blue  are  the  favourite  variation.  In  a  series,  climax  is  often  dis- 
placed by  anticlimax,  as  in  the  quotation  below:  wife  —  betrothed;  gold  —  silver; 
back  —  neck.     For  anticlimax  with  decreasing  numbers,  see  RadlofT,  II.  670. 


214  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

O  Myrat  mine,  Myrat  mine, 

A  sea  is  coming,  — 

How  will  you  cross  it? 

On  its  border  dwells  a  tribe,  — 

How  will  you  come  through  it  ? 

O  Myrat  mine,  Myrat  mine, 
A  stretch  of  water  is  coming,  — 
How  will  you  cross  it? 
On  its  banks  dwells  a  tribe,  — 
How  will  you  come  through  it  ? 

Thus  a  mother  to  her  son ;  his  answer  is  of  the  same  kind ; 
and  so  back  and  forth  for  nineteen  stanzas,  when  the  poem 
closes  with  two  stanzas  sung  by  the  son  happily  returned 
from  war.  With  this  parallelism  of  form  goes  a  parallelism 
of  thought  not  unlike  the  implied  simile  in  poetry  of  the 
schools ;  witness  the  hawk  and  the  relatives,  quoted  just 
above,  or  these  improvised  verses  :  — 

What  has  scattered  the  golden-seeming  leaves? 
Is  it  the  white  birch?     It  is  indeed  ! 
She  whose  hair  streams  down  her  back, 
Is  it  my  wife?     It  is  indeed! 

What  has  scattered  the  silver-seeming  leaves? 
Is  it  the  blue  birch?     It  is  indeed! 
She  whose  hair  streams  down  her  neck. 
Is  it  my  betrothed?     It  is  indeed! 

This  is  growing  a  bit  too  artistic  for  comfort ;  and  presently 
in  another  song  direct  simile  breaks  out :  — 

As  the  meadow  fire  in  spring, 

Warms  this  heart  of  mine  ; 
As  the  bird  that  comes  in  spring, 

Implores  this  eye  of  mine. 

As  the  fire  that  burns  in  autumn, 

Burns  this  heart  of  mine  ; 
As  the  bird  that  comes  in  autumn, 

Mourns  this  eye  of  mine. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        21 5 

Improvised  or  not,  these  songs  are  not  only  of  the  individual 
lover,  but  of  the  artist,  the  bard,  still  close  to  his  throng,  to 
be  sure,  but  with  a  clear  notion  of  his  dignity  and  a  good 
care  for  his  singing-robes.  As  one  of  these  bards,  though 
in  another  tribe,^  prettily  puts  it :  — 

When  the  wind  blows  from  the  right  hand, 

Bends  and  bows  the  poplar  ; 

When  I  sit  and  sing, 

May  there  follow  thirty  songs ! 

When  the  wind  blows  from  the  left  hand, 
May  the  poplar  move  and  quiver! 
When  I  thus  sit  and  sing. 
May  my  own  breast  move  and  quiver! 

Presently  pen  and  paper  will  be  found  for  the  singer,  and  at 
last  printer's  ink  to  spread  his  songs ;  the  days  of  communal 
chorus  and  communal  repetition  are  numbered.  One  other 
effect  of  the  old  communal  impulse,  however,  may  be  noted 
along  with  this  trick  of  style.  The  rhapsode,  singer,  leader, 
where  he  is  first  seen  detaching  himself  from  the  throng,  has 
neither  the  individuality  nor  the  artistic  importance  of  what 
one  now  calls  a  poet.  Every  one  knows  the  solicitude  of 
Germanic  singers  to  base  their  song  upon  tradition,  to  put 
their  own  invention  into  the  background  and  appeal  to  the 
common  stock:  "we  have  heard  tell  of  the  Spear-Danes," 
—  "I  heard  tell  of  Hildebrand  and  Hathubrand."  This 
meant  that  the  tale  to  be  told  had  the  communal  stamp,  and 
was  worth  hearmg.^  Egger^  notes  that  the  oldest  Greek 
rhapsodes,  like  their  songs,  differed  not  one  from  the  other 
in  glory ;  the  best  song  was  simply  the  last  which  had  been 
heard,*  and  there  was  no  trace  of  rivalry  among  the  bards,  no 

1  Radloff,  II.  669. 

2  See  Vilmar,  Deutsche  Aliertumer  im  Heliand,  Marburg,  1862,  pp.  3  f. 

8  Essai  sur  misioire  de  la  Critique  chez  les  Grecs,  Paris,  3d  ed.,  1887,  pp.  6  f. 
*  Odyssey,  I.  352. 


2l6  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

trace  of  partiality  among  the  hearers.  With  the  next  age, 
the  time  of  Hesiod,  came  the  stress  and  struggle  for  a  poet's 
crown ;  and  since  the  crown  was  to  be  awarded  to  the  best 
singer,  judges  were  in  demand,  and  so  a  rough  criticism.  It 
is  easy  to  see  that  this  stage  would  be  reached  in  any  growth 
of  poetry  when  the  bard  began  to  talk  of  his  thirty  songs 
and  of  his  quivering  bosom ;  behind  that  stage  lies  the  stage 
of  the  poets  as  deputies  and  mouthpieces  of  the  throng; 
behind  that,  the  throng  itself. 

We  have  now  to  look  at  a  second  class  of  material  where 
primitive  repetition,  born  of  strong  communal  emotion,  gets 
artistic  control  and  so  passes  into  new  phases  of  develop- 
ment ;  this,  confined  to  no  one  epoch  of  culture,  must  be 
sought  in  some  universal  human  impulse.  Birth,  marriage, 
death,  ought  to  give  rise  to  such  songs.  Obviously,  however, 
the  first  of  these  will  be  of  the  least  value,  and  in  point  of 
fact  songs  of  the  sort  were  rarely  recorded  in  early  times, 
and  perhaps  rarely  if  ever  made.  Marriage  and  death,  from 
the  terms  of  the  case,  promise  far  better ;  and  of  the  two,  — 
for  to  treat  them  both  would  demand  excessive  space,  —  we 
shall  take  the  songs  of  death,  the  voceri}  A  brief  glance  at 
the  marriage-songs,  however,  which  are  mainly  sung  in  com- 
munal dance  and  procession,  shows  repetition  everywhere,  in- 
creasing with  the  older  stages  of  culture.  In  German  villages 
the  whole  community  still  has  a  share  in  the  bridal ;  ^  while 
in  Tyrol,  if  a  girl  goes  outside  the  village  for  a  husband,  the 
youths  mob  her,  tie  her  to  a  dung-cart,  and  lead  her  through  the 
place,  all  singing  derisive  songs,  until  her  father  rescues  her.^ 

'  A  study  of  marriage-songs  must  begin  with  choral  sex-dances  and  songs  of 
the  great  periodic  excitement,  the  mating-time,  still  observed  by  Australian  tribes, 
and  work  up  through  survivals  of  every  sort  to  the  festal  "  epithalamies  "  and  their 
deputies  in  the  poetry  of  art. 

*  E.  II.  Meyer,  Volkskunde,  p.  l68. 

^  Perhaps  a  survival,  hut  surely  an  exceptional  case,  valuable  only  for  the  com- 
munal feeling.     See  Pearson,  who  gives  the  facts,  Chances  of  Death,  II.  141. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        21/ 

Of  course,  the  mobbing  of  unchaste  women  who  marry 
is  common  enough ;  while  in  other  cases  of  local  indigna- 
tion, crowds  and  derisive  songs  are  always  in  order,^  being 
represented  under  conditions  of  print  by  the  "  ballad," 
which  can  be  used  as  a  threat,  like  the  modern  reporter's 
interview  or  "  exposure."  Gretchen,  in  her  terror,  seems 
to  hear  these  mocking  songs.  Poor  Pamela  hoped  she 
would  "  not  be  the  subject  of  their  ballads  and  elegies,"  if 
she  put  an  end  to  herself.  But  this  is  the  other  side  of  a 
joyous  page.  The  later  epithalamy  was  sung  on  private 
family  occasions  outside  the  bridal  chamber  and  Puttenham 
gives  a  lively  description  of  such  festivities  ;  but  public  and 
communal  features  are  the  older  fact.  In  Greece  ^  the 
bridal  song  comes  from  the  festal  crowd  and  accompanies 
the  communal  dance ;  the  bride  throws  bits  of  food  into  the 
village  fountain,  about  which  the  dances  begin,  —  dances 
"  which  are  regarded  as  the  last  act  of  the  wedding  cere- 
mony." The  songs  for  these  dances,  moreover,  along  with 
verses  composed  and  danced  at  other  stages  of  the  affair, 
"  form  a  considerable  part  of  the  national  poetry."  ^  In 
Albania'*  the  bridal  bread  is  baked  on  Thursday,  and  the 
kneading  of  it  is  begun  with  choral  songs  made  for  the  oc- 
casion ;  on  Sunday  the  marriage  takes  place,  and  from  the 
procession  of  the  groom  and  his  friends  down  to  the  depart- 
ure of  the  pair  all  is  song  and  dance.  The  formal  dance  is 
opened  by  bride  and  groom,  when  a  song  is  sung :  "  Raven 


1  0/d  English  Ballads,  pp.  xxxii  ff. 

2  Fauriel,  Chants  Populaires  de  la  Grece  Moderne,  Paris,  I,  1824,  IL  1825. 
See  I.  xxxvi.  Roman  literature  gives  hints  of  the  same  sort.  The  first  epi- 
thalamium  of  Catullus  (Ixi)  is  "  an  imitation  of  the  national  custom  " :  Teuffel, 
Hist.  Roman  Lit.,  trans.  Warr,  p.  5. 

3  The  older  wedding  in  Greece  was  of  the  same  kind.  See  Iliad,  XVIIL 
491  ff.;  K.  O.  Miiller,  Griech.  Lit.,  p.  34.  See  too  the  burlesque  at  the  end  of 
Aristophanes's  Birds,  and  H.  W.  Smythe,  Greek  Melic  Poets,  p.  cxx. 

*  Y\.-3\\n,  Albanesische  Studien,  L  144  ff. 


2l8  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Stole  a  partridge.  —  Partridge  ?  What  will  he  do  with  the 
partridge  ?  —  Play  with  her,  toy  with  her,  and  spend  his  life 
with  her."  English  marriage  customs,  with  communal  dance 
and  song,  were  of  the  same  sort ;  ^  and  "  the  poore  Bryde  " 
had  to  "  kepe  foote  with  al  dauncers  and  refuse  none,  how 
scabbed,  foule,  droncken,  rude  and  shamles  soever  he  be,"  — 
an  early  puritan  view  of  the  case.  Song  and  dance,  com- 
munal rites  throughout,  were  certainly  characteristic  of  the 
Germanic  wedding  in  its  old  estate,  as  is  proved  by  divers 
names  cited  by  Miillenhoff  in  his  essay  on  our  old  choral 
verse,^  and  by  the  fact  that  a  wedding  was  often  called  out- 
right "the  bridal  song."^  Neocorus,*  too,  tells  of  the  cus- 
toms in  his  time  among  the  folk  of  the  Cimbrian  peninsula. 
In  the  East,  again,  down  to  this  day,  a  wedding,  like  a 
funeral,  is  celebrated  by  the  entire  village  for  a  full  week ; 
it  was  on  communal  epithalamies  of  the  sort  that  one 
based  the  artistic  bridal  poem  such  as  Budde^  sees  in  Solo- 
mon's Song.  The  modern  custom  is  said  to  keep  many 
primitive  traits.  After  a  wedding,^  which  is  usually  in  March, 
the  pair  are  treated  for  seven  days  "  as  king  and  queen," 
and  songs,  now  of  communal  victory  and  the  like,  now 
erotic,  are  sung  by  the  folk;  a  great  dance,  moreover,  is 

1  See  the  whole  section  in  Brand's  Antiquities  under  "  Marriage  Customs  and 
Ceremonies."     The  quotation  is  from  The  Christian  State  of  Matrimony,  1543. 

^  De  antiquissima  G er manor uni  poesi  chorica,  Kiel,  1847,  PP-  23  f.  —  "car- 
mina  nuptialia,  quorum  varia  erant  nomina,"  etc.  See  also  Kogel,  Geschichte  der 
deutschen  Lit.,  I.  44  f. 

8  Kogel,  pp.  44  f. 

*  Chronik,  ed.  Dahlmann,  I.  n6  ff.,  176.  It  is  here  that  the  good  man  breaks 
out  in  a  lament  for  the  "  leflliche  schone  Gesenge  "  that  have  been  lost.  Blade, 
Poesies  Pop.  d.  I.  Gascof^ne,  I.  xix  ff.,  says  the  wedding  songs  are  both  traditional 
and  improvised,  taking  the  form  of  choral  dialogues,  where  repetition  is  of  course 
abundant. 

**  "Das  Volkslied  Israels  im  Munde  der  Propheten,"  in  Preussische  Jahrbiicher 
LXXIII.  (1893),  462. 

*  Wetzstcin,  "  Die  syrische  Dreschtafel,"  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologic,  V. 
(1873),  288  ff.     See  p.  297. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL    ELEMENTS         219 

danced  to  the  wasf,  a  song  which  praises  the  charms  of 
bridegroom  and  bride.  The  chorus  is  naturally  insistent 
and  incessant,  and  a  main  characteristic  of  the  songs  is 
repetition.^  But  all  folksong  of  the  wedding  tells  this  tale 
of  dance  and  song,  with  repetition  as  the  chief  feature  of 
the  poetical  style  ;  and  repetition  is  studied  to  even  better 
advantage  in  that  communal  song  of  lamentation  for  the 
dead,  which,  for  convenience,  may  pass  by  its  Corsican 
name  of  vocero. 

Mourners  for  the  dead,  now,  save  in  the  case  of  public 
characters,  restricted  to  kin  and  friends,  but  once  the  whole 
community,  are  only  mutes  or  audience  to  the  act  of  burial ; 
it  is  clear,  however,  that  the  priest  and  the  service,  or,  as  in 
France,  the  oration  at  the  grave,  along  with  the  reticent 
group,  are  deputy  for  older  and  indeed  still  surviving  songs 
of  lament  improvised  and  uttered  by  a  near  relative,  and 
these  again  are  but  a  development  from  the  rhythmic  wail- 
ings  of  a  whole  community  or  clan.  Antiquity  is  no  test 
whatever.  A  husband  who  advances  to  the  coffin  where 
his  dead  wife  is  lying  and  gives  her  a  passionate  farewell, 
after  the  manner  of  the  French,  while  the  funeral  guests 
stand  now  in  sympathetic  silence,  now  with  audible  manifes- 
tations of  grief,  is  doing  precisely  what  Lucian  describes  as 
common  in  his  day,  barring  the  extravagance  of  the  previous 
scene  and  the  violent  demonstrations  made  by  Grecian 
women.  Lucian  thinks  both  demonstrations  and  oration 
ridiculous,^  and  he  gives  a  kind  of  parody  of  the  speech 
which  a  father  makes  over  the  body  of  his  son.  So  too  with 
the  poetical  lament,  the  elegy,  mere  antiquity  goes  for 
nothing ;  and  the  question   is  one   of   stages   of   evolution, 

^  The  various  German  bridal  songs  printed  by  Firmenich,  Germaniens  V'olker- 
stimmen,  are  mostly  artificial  things;  and  one  which  goes  to  a  lively  rhythm  and 
is  meant  for  a  dance  (I.  165)  has  fallen  into  mere  barnyard  filth. 

2  Lucian,  On  Mournings  12  f.  "A  speech  senseless  and  ridiculous,"  he  says 
of  the  oration. 


220  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

regardless  of  chronology,  from  the  communal  and  choral 
wail  up  to  the  highly  individualized  and  intellectualized 
monody  of  grief.  The  elegy  of  Simonides  over  the  dead 
at  Marathon  was  doubtless  in  its  way  as  artistic  as  Tennyson's 
Ode  on  Wellington  ;  and  the  same  perspective  must  be  kept 
in  dealing  with  private  outbursts  of  sorrow.  Tennyson's 
own  lines  on  the  death  of  his  brother  are  not  a  whit  more 
modern  in  tone  than  the  Ave  atque  Vale  of  Catullus  which 
inspired  them.  The  more  primitive  obligation  was  not  to 
hear  in  respectful  sympathy,  not  to  read  with  intellectual 
approval,  the  oration  or  the  poem,  but  to  weep  with  them 
that  weep  and  so  to  sing  with  them  that  sing.  Uhland^ 
cleverly  notes  the  mythological  projection  of  this  older 
custom  in  that  lament  for  Balder  shared  by  all  animate  and 
inanimate  creation.  We  are  not,  however,  to  think  of  the  vocero 
as  sprung  from  the  ceremonies  of  a  primitive  funeral.  His- 
torians of  literature  are  fond  of  such  a  process,  and  fix  upon 
this  or  that  religious  rite  as  the  source  of  some  poem  or  song; 
Kogel,^  for  example,  traces  epic  to  a  ceremonial  rite  as  to  its 
ultimate  origin,  and,  for  this  particular  case,  insists  that 
the  vocero  of  a  Germanic  wife  over  her  husband  was  a  song 
of  magic,  a  kind  of  incantation,  asserting,  wildly  enough, 
that  choral  lament  for  the  dead  was  unknown  to  the  Germans 
of  Tacitus,  while  magic  songs  had  long  been  in  vogue.  This 
is  distortion  of  facts  and  reversal  of  natural  evolution.  By 
the  very  terms  of  social  organization,  social  consent  must 
precede  social  institutions,  and  a  ceremonial  must  usually 
be  regarded  not  as  the  beginning  but  as  the  end  of  a  social 
process.  The  prime  factor  in  social  expression  was  consent 
of  rhythm;  rhythmic  cries  at  wedding^  and    at  funeral  do 

1  Kl.  Schrift.,  III.  445, 

2  See  his  Gesch.  d.  d.  Lit.,  I.  47,  51. 

8  Professor  Smythe  points  out,  Greek  Melic  Poets,  p.  cxiv,  that  Homer  describes 
a  hymeneal  but  "  nowhere  alludes  to  the  religious  element  in  the  celebration  of 

the  rite." 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        221 

not  spring  from  the  religious  rites,  although  this  or  that 
wedding-song,  this  or  that  threnody,  may  have  had  such  an 
origin  ;  the  rites  are  rather  themselves  an  outcome,  under 
priestly  control  and  the  hardening  of  custom  into  law,  of 
this  festal  excitement,  this  communal  grief.  The  priest, 
even  the  shaman,  is  deputy  of  that  throng  which  was  once 
active  and  is  now  passive ;  and  when  one  considers  the 
literature  of  death,  one  finds  the  earliest  stages  of  funeral 
lament  in  that  half  chaotic  chorus  of  repetition  and  tumult- 
uous cries  which  cannot  be  derived  from  any  ceremony, 
strictly  so  called,  but  is  rather  on  the  way  to  ceremony.  At 
this  literature  we  are  now  to  look. 

Homer  has  preserved  in  an  artistic  form  echoes  of  primitive 
wailing,  of  primitive  repetition  and  choral  cries,  when  he 
describes  the  funeral  of  Hector.^  "  And  the  others  .  .  . 
laid  him  on  a  fretted  bed,  and  set  beside  him  minstrels, 
leaders  of  the  dirge,  who  wailed  a  mournful  lay,  while  the 
women  made  moan  with  them."  Andromache  then  leads 
the  lamentation,  "  while  in  her  hands  she  held  the  head  of 
Hector,  slayer  of  men.  '  Husband,  thou  art  gone  young 
from  life.'  .  .  .  Thus  spake  she  wailing,  and  the  women 
joined  their  moan."  Then  Hecuba ;  and  again  the  line  like 
a  refrain,  "  Thus  spake  she  wailing,  and  stirred  unending 
moan."  Lastly  Helen;  and  again,  "Thus  spake  she  wail- 
ing, and  therewith  the  great  multitude  of  the  people  groaned." 
Wailings  of  the  throng  are  echoed  also  in  choruses  of  Greek 
tragedy  ;  ^  but  it  is  these  epic  passages  and  their  details  which 
carry  one  back  into  the  communal  realm,  quite  away  from 

1  Iliad,  XXIV,  719  ff.,  trans.  Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers. 

"^  See  H.  Koester,  de  Cantilenis  Popularihus  Veterum  Graecorum,  Berol.,  1831, 
p.  15.  Roman  neniae,  of  course,  are  in  point  (see  Sittl,  Geb'drden  der  Griechen 
und  Romer ;  Cap.  IV.) ;  but  the  artificial  element  is  very  strong,  and  primitive 
survivals  are  few.  Wordsworth,  Fragments  and  Specimens  of  Early  Latin,  p. 
562,  says  of  the  epitaphs  on  the  Scipios,  "  Whether  they  were  or  were  not  frag- 
ments of  neniae  is  quite  uncertain." 


222  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  satire  of  Lucian,^  however  some  of  the  features  which  he 
describes  may  seem  to  be  repeated  here.  The  song  of  lament, 
whether  a  domestic  duty  or  a  professional  act,  was  mainly  a 
matter  for  the  women,  and  was  originally  improvised  ;  at  the 
funeral  of  Achilles,^  it  is  his  mother  and  "the  deathless 
maidens  of  the  waters  "  who  wail  about  his  pyre,  and  it  is  the 
muses  themselves  who  raise  the  clear  chant.  So  Hildeburh 
at  the  funeral  pile,  in  that  episode  of  the  Beowulf:  ^  — 

Sad  at  his  shoulder  sorrowed  the  woman, 
Moaned  him  in  songs. 

That  a  wailing  chorus  answered  her  wailing  there  can  be  no 
doubt,  though  nothing  is  said  of  it;  that  the  song  is  not 
quoted,  that  the  record  of  these  rites  is  brief,  can  be  explained 
easily  enough,  when  one  remembers  the  monk  who  set  down 
this  fine  old  epic  with  pagan  delight  in  his  heart  but  a  crucifix 
before  his  eyes,  and  constant  thunder  of  ecclesiastical  denun- 
ciation in  his  ears.  Those  neniae  inJionestae,  the  singing  of 
diabolical  songs  and  the  dancing  of  diabolical  dances  *  about 

^  Crude  enough,  to  be  sure,  compared  with  Chaucer's  humour  in  deaUng  with 
the  funeral  of  Arcite :  — 

"  Why  woldestow  be  deed,"  thise  wommen  crye, 
"And  haddest  gold  ynough,  and  Emelye?" 

For  this  is  the  conventional  question,  in  whatever  form,  in  the  vocero  of  all  places 
and  ages:  "Why  did  you  die?  You  had  enough  to  eat,  you  had  clothes,"  etc. 
Old  Egeus  has  the  modern  consolation,  and  philosophizes  in  no  communal  vein. 

2  Odyssey,  XXIV.  59  ff. 

3  1 1 1 7  f.  It  has  been  noted  that  Kogel,  Gesch.  d.  d.  Lit.,  I.  54,  says,  without 
good  reason,  that  this  was  a  magic  song,  a  spruch.  It  was  surely  what  it  is  called, 
a  song  of  lament,  a  vocero,  and  doubtless  asked  the  same  old  question. 

*  St.  Augustine  tells  how  such  songs  were  sung  at  the  tomb  of  St.  Cyprian : 
"  per  totam  noctem  cantabantur  hie  nefaria,  et  cantantibus  saltalxiinr."  See  also 
the  well-known  passage  from  Burchard  of  Worms :  "  cantasti  ibi  diabolica  car- 
mina  et  fccisti  ibi  saltationes  "  —  i.e.  zi  the  "vigiliis  cadaverum  mortuorum." 
Miillenhoff,  work  quoted,  pp.  26  ff.,  gives  some  of  these  protests  of  the  church. 
On  p.  30  he  notes  that  the  songs  themselves  were  improvised  :  extempore  et  subito 
facta.  The  older  the  rite,  the  more  choral  and  communal  it  grows.  The  names 
(J.bid.,  p.  25)  are  significant  :  dddsisas,  leidsang,  chlagasang,  etc.,  for  older  Ger- 
man; llcsang,  Ileitis  {epicedium) ,  byrgensang  {epitaphium),t\.c.,  for  older  English. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        223 

a  corpse,  all  the  "  payens  corsed  olde  rites,"  were  denounced 
by  bishops  and  councils  of  the  church  with  a  fervid  itera- 
tion which  at  once  accounts  for  the  silence  of  the  poets  and 
testifies  to  the  stubborn  vogue  of  the  ceremony.  The  dance 
is  of  course  a  survival  of  very  primitive  rites,  as  will  be  seen 
in  the  study  of  the  actual  voccro,  and  as  can  be  learned  from 
ethnology ;  for  the  epics  it  has  been  developed  into  funeral 
games,  although  in  the  Beowulf  one  finds  an  older  stage  of 
these  ceremonies  than  in  Homer.  Besides  Hrothgar's  lament 
over  Aeschere,  a  lament  intensified  by  the  absence  of  the  dead 
body,^  and  the  moanings  of  old  Hrethel  for  his  son,^  there  is 
the  hero's  own  funeral,  where,  when  all  the  clan,  presumably, 
have  mourned  their  lord,  presumably  in  song,  and  when  the 
wife  has  sung,  like  Hildeburh,  her  giomorgyd,  her  song  of 
lamentation,  at  last  the  ashes  are  placed  in  the  barrow,  and 
twelve  noble  youths  ride  round  it  chanting  the  praises  of  the 
dead  king.  A  close  parallel  to  this  ceremony  is  found  far  to 
the  eastward.  In  what  is  now  known  to  have  been  a  Gothic 
rather  than  a  Hunnish  rite,  warriors  rode,  "  as  in  the  games  of 
the  circus,"  round  the  body  of  Attila  where  he  lay  in  state, 
and  as  they  rode  sang  also  a  funeral  song  of  praise ;  Jor- 
danis^  gives  a  Latin  version  of  it,  but  as  it  stands  in  this 
guise,  it  has  a  very  artistic  and  even  artificial  ring.  The  clan- 
grief  and  the  clan-praise  at  Beowulf's  funeral  are  nearer  to 
the  facts.    As  regards  the  riding,  it  is  clear  that  this  takes  the 

1  Beow.,  1322,  2124  f. 

-  Ibid.,  2446  f.,  2460.  There  is  a  sort  of  vocero  echo  here.  Remarkable,  too, 
in  the  story  of  the  self-buried  chief,  is  a  vocero  of  that  old  man  over  him- 
self, the  last  of  the  race  burying  his  treasure  as  a  kind  of  substitute  :  ibid.,  2233  ff. 
It  is  superfluous  to  point  out  how  English  lyric  poetry,  from  the  Ruin  to  the  Elegy>, 
and  on  to  our  own  day,  loves  to  linger  by  a  grave.  Traces  of  the  vocero  that 
led  to  the  vendetta  might  be  found  in  the  countless  stories  of  old  Germanic  feud. 

2  De  Orig.  Act.  Getaruni,  ed.  Holder,  c.  49.  A  similar  story  is  told  (c.  41) 
of  the  funeral  cf  King  Theoderid  of  the  Visigoths,  killed  in  451,  and  of  the  wild 
songs  that  were  sung  even  on  the  field  of  battle  as  the  warriors  bore  away  the 
body  of  their  king. 


224 


THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 


place  of  an  older  dance  or  march,  just  as  the  song  takes  the 
place  of  older  wailings  and  cries.  The  processions  of  a  whole 
community,  at  times  of  planting  and  of  harvest,  round  the 
field,  the  barn,  the  village,  to  which  we  shall  presently  refer 
when  considering  the  refrain,  are  matched  by  similar  rites 
of  marching  with  dance  and  song  round  hearth,  grave,  altar, 
in  the  ceremonies  of  wedding  and  burial.  On  the  Isle  of 
Man  a  wedding  party  goes  three  times  round  the  church 
before  it  enters ;  and  in  many  places  the  corpse  is  carried  in 
the  same  way  for  a  funeral.  In  the  latter  case,  the  solemn 
march  is  only  a  repetition  of  the  dance  round  the  corpse 
itself,  the  mourners  going  hand  in  hand,  now  slowly,  now 
tumultuously,  to  the  sound  of  their  own  wailing.  Ethnological 
evidence,  again,  puts  the  songs  and  dances  for  the  dead,  as 
found  among  savage  tribes  throughout  the  world,  in  Hne 
with  these  survivals  among  the  peasantry  of  Europe ;  no 
chain  of  evidence  could  be  more  complete.  To  this  ethno- 
logical material  we  shall  presently  return ;  meanwhile  it  is  in 
order  to  note  the  evidence  in  literature. 

We  have  seen  obvious  cases  of  the  vocero  in  oldest  English, 
and  it  could  be  followed  in  other  Germanic  records.  Probably 
many  of  the  English  and  Scottish  ballads  began  as  a  kind  of 
vocero,  something  like  the  coronach  of  Highland  clans :  one 
thinks  of  Bonny  George  Campbell,  with  its  repetition  and 
refrain,  and  of  TJie  Bo7iny  Earl  of  Murray,  with  its  triad  of 
incremental  repetitions,  ballads  which  follow  close  upon  the 
death  of  their  hero  ;  of  ballads  less  immediate  but  still  memo- 
rial, like  The  Baron  of  Bracklcy,  and  perhaps  TJie  Loivlajids  of 
Holla7id ;  even  of  the  widely  spread  ballads  of  a  condemned 
criminal,  the  Good  Nights,  and  such  admirable  precipitates  of 
this  kind  as  Mary  Hamilton.  For  more  direct  evidence,  the 
refrain  line  Ohon  for  my  son  Leesome  Brand !^  is  promising; 
but  it  is  only  a  line.     One  vocero,  however,  has  come  down 

1  Child,  I.  182. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL    ELEMENTS         225 

to  US,  although  considerably  changed  from  the  normal  and 
original  pattern.  In  Aubrey's  Remains  of  Getitilisnie  and 
Jiidaisme}  mention  is  made  of  "  Irish  bowlings  at  Funeralls, 
also  in  Yorkshire  withijt  these  70  yeares  (1688)"  ;  and  again, 
quoting  the  song,  TJiis  ean  nig  Jit,  Aubrey  says  it  is  from  Mr. 
Mawtese,  "  in  whose  father's  youth,  sc.  about  sixty  years 
since  (now  1686),  at  country  vulgar  Funeralls  was  sung  this 
song,"  by  a  woman  like  -di praefica.  Scott  has  a  like  account; 
it  was  sung  a  century  ago^  "by  the  lower  ranks  of  Roman 
Catholics  in  some  parts  of  the  north  of  England.  The  tune 
is  doleful  and  monotonous."  The  refrain,  or,  as  Scott  calls  it, 
the  chorus,  is  very  insistent  and  belongs  to  genuine  communal 
tradition ;  he  quotes  an  account  of  Cleveland,  Yorkshire,  in 
the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  which  was  found  by  Ritson  in 
a  manuscript  of  the  Cotton  library :  "  When  any  dieth,  cer- 
taine  women  sing  a  song  to  the  dead  bodie,  recyting  the 
journey  that  the  partye  deceased  must  goe."  The  following 
stanzas  will  serve  as  specimens  of  this  highly  developed  but 
interesting  vocero :  — 

This  ae  nighte,  this  ae  nighte, 

Every  night  and  alle ; 
Fire  and  sleete  and  candle-light, 

And  Christe  receive  thye  satde. 

When  thou  from  hence  away  art  paste, 

Every  night  and  alle, 
To  Whinny-muir  thou  comest  at  laste, 

Atid  Christe  receive  thye  satile. 

In  Germany,  the  vocero  lingered  long,  but  is  dying  or  dead ; 
it  was  an  improvised  farewell  in  "  free  "  rhythm.^  A  very 
interesting  communal  survival  akin  to  the  vocero  was  known 

1  Folk-Lore  Soc.  Pub.,  IV.  (1881),  pp.  21,  31. 

2  Scott,  Minstrelsy,  1812,  II.  361  ff. 

^  Still  found  in  remote  places,  —  among  Germans  in  North  Hungary,  and  in 
Gottschee  in  Krain,  speech-islands  both.     Meyer,  Volkskunde,  p.  272. 

Q 


226  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

in  Flanders  down  to  the  year  1840, — The  Maids'  Dance  ^  at 
the  funeral  of  a  companion ;  it  was  sung  and  danced  by  the 
young  girls  of  the  parish.  When  the  coffin  had  been  lowered 
into  the  grave,  all  these  girls,  holding  by  one  hand  the  cloth 
which  had  covered  the  corpse,  went  back  to  the  church  sing- 
ing this  "  dance  "  with  a  force  and  a  rhythmic  accent  which 
roused  the  hearer's  surprise.^  The  two  stanzas  and  the  refrain 
are,  of  course,  partly  modern  ;  but  they  show  traces  of  the  old 
dance  and  vocero  noted  below  as  surviving  among  the  Corsi- 

cans :  —  tt    •    1  •      j 

Up  m  heaven  is  a  dance ; 

Alleluia. 

There  the  maidens  are  dancing  all. 

Beiiedicamiis  Domino. 

Alleluia,  Alleluia. 

It  is  for  Amelia ; 

Alleluia, 
We're  dancing  as  the  maidens  dance. 

Benedicanius  Domino. 

Alleluia,  Alleluia. 

But  there  is  better  material  in  the  literature  of  other  races. 
Nowhere,  for  example,  is  the  wailing  and  chanting  of  women 
over  the  dead  better  attested  than  among  the  Hebrews  of  the 
Old  Testament ;  Syrians  of  to-day  hold  to  the  same  rites  and 
sing  a  song  of  mourning  strangely  like  that  which  Jeremiah 
heard  twenty-five  centuries  ago.^  The  lament  of  David  over 
Saul  and  Jonathan,  known  to  be  an  actual  Mna,  with  its  per- 
sonal touch  of  "  my  brother,"  and  its  communal  refrain,  Jiow 

1  "  Dans  der  Maegdekens,"  heard  at  Bailleul  by  Cousseraaker.  See  his  Chants 
Populaires  des  Flamands  de  France,  Gand,  1856,  pp.  lOO  f.  Soon  after  1840  it 
was  forbidden,  and  the  song  is  no  more,  save  in  the  record.  It  goes  back,  says 
C,  to  the  oldest  times. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  loi. 

8  Budde,  "  Das  hebraische  Klagehed,"  Zeitschr.  f.  alttestamentl.  Wissensch.,  II. 
26  f.;  and  Wetzstein,  "  Syrische  Drcschtafel,"  as  quoted  above.  See  also  same 
Zeitsch.,  III.  299  ff.  For  the  professional  singing-women,  iht  praeficae  of  Israel, 
see  Jer.  ix.  19. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        227 

ar'e  the  mighty  fallen,  differs  from  the  professional  lamenta- 
tion of  the  women,  which  was  in  a  fixed  rhythm/  while  David's 
outburst  is  spontaneous  and  "free."  In  cases  of  this  kind,  to 
be  sure,  one  must  always  reckon  with  the  literary  and  artistic 
element;  but  David's  vocero  is  close  to  the  popular  custom, 
and  of  more  value  to  the  student  than  the  lament  of  tragedy 
old  and  new.  Indeed,  a  kind  of  declamation  over  the  dead 
relative  is  often  found  in  tragedy,  with  some  resemblance  to 
the  actual  vocero  both  in  matter  and  in  style,  but  with  an  alien 
touch  of  rhetoric ;  so  Hieronimo,  showing  the  corpse  of  his 
son,  has  the  repetition  and  play  of  words  already  noted  among 
the  early  Elizabethans,  and  at  far  remove  from  that  "  O  my 
son  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  Absalom ! "  of  the  immediate 

lament :  — 

Here  lay  my  hope,  and  here  my  hope  hath  end ; 
Here  lay  my  heart,  and  here  my  heart  was  slain ; 
Here  lay  my  treasure,  here  my  treasure  lost, 

and  the  rest.  Hamlet  and  Laertes  at  the  grave  of  Ophelia 
suggest  further  distortion,  turning  the  lament  into  a  kind  of 
flyting.  It  is  the  actual  vocero,  and  the  communal  conditions 
of  it,  from  which  one  learns  the  course  of  poetry ;  and  this 
actual  vocero,  even  in  its  Homeric  form,  has  two  elements,  the 
song  of  the  relative  and  the  answering  wail  of  the  throng. 
With  later  conditions  the  single  song  comes  to  be  profes- 
sional, as  with  Hebrews,  Romans,  and  nearly  all  nations ;  or 
else  the  women  move  with  sympathetic  gestures  now  round 
the  chief  mourner,  now  round  the  corpse,  singing  and  wailing 
as  they  go.  Like  modern  Syria,  modem  Greece  keeps  the 
old  custom ;  the  myriologue  has  many  features  of  the  Ho- 
meric rite,  particularly  the  primitive  trait  of  improvisation. 
The  song,  says  Fauriel,^  is  never  composed  in  advance,  but  is 

^  Budde,    "  Die   hebraische    Leichenklage,"    Zeitschr.    d,  deutsch.    Paldstina- 
Vereins,  VI.  181  f.,  184  fF. 
2  Work  quoted,  p.  cxxxiii. 


228  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF    POETRY 

always  improvised  in  the  very  moment  that  it  is  delivered,  and 
is  always  fitted  to  the  person  addressed.  "It  is  always  in 
verse ;  the  verses  are  always  in  the  metre  of  other  popular 
songs;  and  they  are  always  sung."  Each  village  —  and  the 
communal  trait  is  significant  —  has  an  air  of  its  own  for  these 
lamentations,  and  sings  them  to  no  other  air.  Hahn's  ac- 
count ^  is  worth  quoting.  When  a  man  has  died,  the  women 
of  his  family  make  a  fearful  cry,^  which  brings  all  the  neigh- 
bouring women  to  the  house,  shrieking,  howling,  and  gesticu- 
lating with  the  mourners.  The  actual  relatives  tear  their  hair, 
dash  their  heads  against  the  wall,  call  upon  the  dead  by  name, 
and  scream  so  loudly^  and  continuously  that  for  a  time  they 
often  lose  their  voices.*  So  the  women ;  the  men  are  more 
calm.  The  corpse  is  now  washed  and  clad,  whereupon  the 
women  seat  themselves  about  it,  and  the  real  lament  begins. 
"  This  is  always  rhythmic  and  generally  consists  of  two 
verses  sung  by  one  voice  and  repeated  by  the  whole  chorus 
of  women."  Now  it  is  traditional,  now  improvised.  As  fast 
as  one  woman  is  exhausted,  another  lifts  her  hand  in  signal 
and  begins  a  new  verse.  On  the  way  to  burial  they  sing  in 
the  same  fashion. 

This  song  over  the  dead,  which  is  found  throughout  the 
world,  in  Greenland,  in  Peru,  in  the  Hebrides,  among  the 
Hottentots,^  shows  a  course  of  development  in  which  the  de- 
tached or  literary  lament  is  the  latest  stage.  Here  it  may  be 
a  great  poem,  pulsing  with  the  grief  of  nations  and  close  to 

1  J.  G.  Hahn,  Albattesische  Studien,  I.  150  f. 

2  Precisely  as  among  the  Irish.  See  Miss  Edgeworth's  account,  quoted  by 
Brand,  Antiquities,  "  Watching  with  the  Dead." 

8  In  a  note,  I.  198,  Hahn  notes  that  Plato  forbade  this  wild  cry  {^f-egg.  xxi),  but 
allowed  the  song  of  lament.     For  calling  on  the  dead,  cf.  Latin  inclamare. 

*  One  of  the  canons  which  condemned  heathen  customs  at  Christian  funerals 
forbids  not  only  song  and  dance,  but  also  ilium  uhilatum  excelsum. 

^  The  vocero  sung  liy  natives  of  Algiers  has  been  noted  as  strongly  resembling 
the  Corsican.  A  specimen,  quoted  from  Certcux  and  Carnoy,  LAlgerie  Tra- 
ditionellc,  is  full  of  repetition  and  refrain. 


THE    DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        229 

the  common  heart,  or  a  mere  exercise  made  by  rule ;  the  gay 
science  of  Provence,  like  the  school  poetry  of  Germany  and 
England,  had  minute  directions  for  the  making  of  a  good 
planch}  "  One  may  compose  a  song  of  lament  in  any  mel- 
ody," runs  the  Catalan  rule,  "  save  in  the  melody  of  a  dance," 
—  strange  exception,  when  one  comes  to  the  dances  which 
so  often  went  with  the  real  zwcero ;  and  Master  Vinesauf ,2 
in  his  Poetria,  called  out  Chaucer's  well-known  gibe  ^  by  the 
recipe  for  a  poem  of  grief.  "  When  you  wish  to  express 
grief,"  he  advises,  "say  something  like  this;"  and  an  appro- 
priate sentiment  follows.  That  is  the  literary  stage,  the 
detached  lament ;  but  behind  the  little  artifice,  as  behind 
the  great  art,  lies  the  real  vocero  with  elements  that  need 
to  be  set  in  right  perspective.  We  see  the  corpse,  the  wail- 
ing relatives,  the  singing  relatives,  the  professional  singing 
women,  the  whole  clan  in  tumultuous  grief,  loud  discordant 
cries,  a  choral  wail  which  is  rhythmic  and  articulate,  chanted 
verses.  Of  all  these  the  professional  singing  woman  such  as 
Jeremiah  invoked,  the  pracfica  of  Rome,  the  keener  at  an 
Irish  funeral,  is  the  nearest  to  literary  lament,  and  connects 
the  communal  with  the  artistic.  Behind  her,  and  taking  her 
place  as  one  follows  back  the  course  of  evolution,  stands  the 
"  free  "  or  natural  mourner,  now  and  then  a  man,'*  but  usu- 

1  Springer,  Das  altprovenzalische  Klagelied,  Berlin,  1895,  pp.  8  ff.  It  is  this 
formal  poem  of  grief  which  is  in  the  mind  of  Crescimbeni,  Comentarj  Intorno 
all'  Istoria  delta  Volgar  Poesia,  1 73 1,  I.  256,  when  he  traces  the  Italian  funeral 
song  back  to  Latin  and  Greek. 

-  This  English  Boileau,  who  "flourished,"  in  two  senses,  about  1200,  is  good 
reading.  His  Poetria  begins  at  p.  862  of  Polycarpi  Leyseri  ,  ,  .  Historia  Poeta- 
rwn  et  Poemaiiim  Medii  ^vi,  Hal.  Magd.,  MDCCXXI. 

3  C.  r.,4537  ff.     The  Latin: 

Temporibus  luctus,  his  verbis  exp7-itne  htctum. 

*  Marcaggi,  Les  Chants  de  la  Mo  ft  et  de  la  Vendetta  de  la  Cofse,  Paris,  1898, 
?•  I93»  gives  a  vocero  said  to  have  been  made  by  a  monk,  who  calls  on  the  celestial 
powers  to  join  the  chorus  and  wail  the  death  of  his  two  friends :  "  Jesus,  Joseph, 
Mary,  Sacred  Sacrament,  and  all  of  you  here  in  chorus,  sing  this  lamento." 
Bandits  make  a  vocero,  pp.  307  f. 


230  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

ally  wife  or  mother  or  sister  of  the  dead.  Behind  these, 
again,  stands  the  throng  itself,  the  original  mourners,  clan 
or  horde  of  a  time  when  the  bonds  of  mere  community  were 
stronger  than  any  ties  of  kin,  and  when  individual  grief  was 
hardly  if  at  all  lifted  from  the  communal  level;  and  with 
this  stage  one  has  come  from  elaborate  verse,  through  choral 
lament,  to  mere  iteration  of  clamorous  grief,  rhythmical  by 
the  consent  of  a  throng  and  by  the  compulsion  of  dance,  ges- 
ture, and  spasmodic  utterance.  In  this  communal  refrain, 
then,  we  reach  the  origin  of  all  laments ;  here  is  surely  one, 
at  least,  of  the  "  beginnings  of  poetry  "  ;  and  in  the  vocero  of 
Corsica  break  forth  even  yet  those  cadenced  interjections 
which  were  heard  throughout  the  Orient,  spread  over  Greece 
in  the  wailings  for  Adonis,  and  echo  in  the  repeated  denun- 
ciation of  Jeremiah  :  "  They  shall  not  lament  for  him,  saying, 
AJi  my  brother!  or  Ah  sister!  —  They  shall  not  lament  for 
him,  saying.  Ah  Lord !  or  Ah  his  glory  !  He  shall  be  buried 
with  the  burial  of  an  ass,  drawn  and  cast  forth  beyond  the 
gates  of  Jerusalem."  ^  But  these  earliest  cadenced  cries  are 
best  approached  by  means  of  the  second  stage  ;  and  the  song 
of  grief  can  still  be  heard  in  Corsica  from  wife  or  mother  of 
the  dead,  with  all  the  force  and  naturalness  of  the  vocero  as 
it  is  described  by  Homer  and  in  the  Be'owulf.  Elsewhere,  of 
course,  and  in  Italy  itself,  one  can  find  material  of  the  sort. 
D'Annunzio  describes,  in  terms  said  to  be  rigorously  correct, 
a  peasant  mother's  improvised  vocero  at  sight  of  her  drowned 
boy.^  After  a  few  moments  of  silence,  broken  only  by  wild 
outcries,  she  begins  her  spontaneous  song  in  a  short,  pant- 
ing rhythm,  rising  and  falHng  with  the  palpitations  of  her 

^  Jer.  xxii.  i8.     See  below,  on  the  Linos  song. 

2  Trionfo  delta  Aforte,  pp.  419  f.  "  Era  I'antica  monodia  che  da  tempo  imme- 
morabile  in  terra  d'Abruzzi  le  donne  cantavano  su  le  spoglie  dei  consanguinei." 
See  another  account  of  the  Italian  vocero  in  Guastella,  Canti  Popolari  del  Cir- 
condario  di  Modica,  Modica,  1876,  p.  Ixxix.  He  notes,  moreover,  that  in  Sicily 
ihe  pre/ic/ie  are  called  ripetitrici. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        231 

heart ;  a  characteristic  noted  also  by  writers  on  the  Corsican 
vocero. 

We  turn,  then,  first  to  this  Corsican  lament.^  Voceri  they 
call  the  songs,  as  one  might  say  "vociferations,"  a  name 
doubtless  due  to  the  gridatu  or  inarticulate  wailings  of  the 
throng,  which  precede  the  vocero  proper ;  lamenti  and  ballati 
are  terms  sometimes  used  instead,  the  second,  of  course, 
referring  to  those  dances  which  were  once  an  inseparable 
part  of  the  rite,  but  are  now  seldom  seen.  "  Make  wide  the 
circle,"  runs  one  lament,  "and  dance  the  caracolu ;  for  this 
sorrow  is  very  sore."^  As  for  the  song  itself,  it  is  briefly 
but  adequately  defined^  as  an  "improvised  funeral  song," 
sung  by  a  near  female  relative  of  the  dead  man,  in  a  strophe 
of  six  verses  with  four  measures  to  the  verse,  that  verse 
beloved  everywhere  of  communal  poetry;  and  since  the 
same  occasion  begets  them  all,  all  voceri  have  considerable 
likeness  one  to  another,  with  recurrence  of  word  and  phrase. 
The  speech  of  Corsica  is  itself  rudely  poetic ;  and  these  im- 
provisations, though  full  of  traditional  passages, —  "  sweeter 
than  honey  "  ;  "better  than  bread,"  —  are  direct  in  their  dic- 
tion, even  to  a  point  that  seems  at  first  sight  to  deny  such  a 
fundamental  communal  trait  as  repetition.  Iteration,  how- 
ever, is  there,  insistently  there,  when  one  takes  into  account 
not  only  the  refrain,  always  breaking  down  into  sobs  and  re- 

^  Merimee's  Columba  has  made  the  vocero  famiUar  to  readers.     See  also  Mar 
caggi,  work  quoted;   Ortoli,  Les  Voceri  de  Pile  de  Corse,  Paris,  1887;  Paul  de  St. 
Victor,  Homines  et  Dieux,  Paris,  1872,  pp.  349-369,  a  reprinted  article  cannily 
decocted  and  pleasantly  served  in  the  English  periodical  Once  a  Week,  1867,  pp. 
437-442.     St.  Victor  refers  to  the  older  collections  of  Tommaseo  and  of  Fee. 

2  Marcaggi,  p.  161.  See  above  on  the  ride  round  the  body  of  Beowulf  and  of 
Attila,  and  the  older  dance.  The  caracolu  is  "  a  sort  of  pantomime,  a  funeral 
dance  done  by  the  mourners  round  the  corpse  as  they  make  gestures  of  grief." 
The  caracolu  is  danced  no  more.  And  again,  Marcaggi,  p.  231,  note:  " vocerare 
ou  ballatrare  veut  done  dire  improviser  un  vocero,"  —  highly  suggestive  fact. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  4;  Ortoli,  p.  xxxiv.  Of  these  two,  Marcaggi  prints  mainly  the  older 
material,  with  a  few  new  pieces  of  miscellaneous  character,  such  as  cradle-songs 
and  serenades. 


232  THE   BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

peated  moans,  but  the  evident  suppression  of  repetition  in 
the  text.  As  to  the  refrain,  the  leader  now  bids  all  present 
join  her  in  this  wailing  cry,  and  now  bids  them  cease  in  order 
that  she  may  be  heard  :  — ■ 

Di  gratia,  fate  silenziu  .  .  . 
Finitele  ste  gride  .  .  . 

and  now,  again,  she  takes  the  refrain  bodily  into  her  own 
song,  beginning  thus  a  new  stanza.  "  Di,  di,  dih  !  Woe  is 
me !  Make  one  great  cry  of  sorrow,  brothers  and  sisters 
all,"  sings  a  wife  over  her  husband ;  and  this  inarticulate  bit 
of  chorus,  always  sung,  as  Marcaggi  says,^  at  the  end  of  each 
stanza,  by  the  women  who  surround  the  corpse,  may  be  the 
imitation  —  echo  would  better  hit  the  truth  —  of  the  old  sob- 
bing of  the  throng.  As  for  the  text,  repetition  is  hardly  to 
be  expected  in  print,  and  the  editors  have  (doubtless  done  as 
Lyngbye  did  with  Faroe  ballads,  though  here  and  there 
occurs  a  line^  like, — 

Chdta,  ch^ta,  cheta,  o  Skgra, 
Clidf  €  nun  piegna  piu  tantu. 

They  are  keen  to  record  the  power  of  improvisation  shown  by 

their  countrywomen ;  what  use  to  print  pages  of  iteration  ? 

A  fine  hint,  however,  can  be  found  in  Marcaggi's  forewords, 

not  only  of  the  silly  sooth  but  of  the  old  time ;  he  saw,  he 

says,  "one  day  a  poor  woman  run  shrieking  from  her  house, 

her  hair  disordered,  and  coming  to  the  public  square,  where 

the  corpse  of  her  sister-in-law  lay,  sing  in  a  mournful  and 

monotonous  note,  with  grotesque  leaps  and  bounds  :  — 

O  commari  Maii  ! 
O  commari  Mari ! 

People  said,"  adds  Marcaggi,  '^  that  she  was  following  the 
custom  of  a  fonncr  age,   and   that    she    lacked    proper   re- 

1  I  lis  philology  is  unnecessary,  p.  85.  Ortoli,  too,  should  stick  to  his  "  espece 
de  sanglot,"  rather  than  follow  his  colleague's  "  racine  <le  tiliare  "  or  contraction 
oiOhDio!  2  Ortoli,  p.  248. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        233 

serve."  ^  This  is,  indeed,  the  more  primitive  note  ;  and  the 
iterated  cry,  mere  appeal  to  the  dead,  like  those  cris  cVenterre- 
ment  which  Blade  heard  at  Gascon  burials,  was  once  sung  by 
the  swaying  and  dancing  throng  of  mourners.  Psychologi- 
cally and  physiologically  this  is  quite  in  order ;  a  kind  of 
communal  hysterics,  intensely  rhythmical,  as  with  a  badly 
frightened  child,  as  with  insanity,  delirium,  abnormal  emo- 
tion of  any  kind,  has  the  cadent  and  recurrent  note  at  its 
utmost;  and  this  woman,  with  her  "lack  of  decorum,"  like 
that  peasant  on  the  beach  by  the  drowned  boy,  is  the  modern 
survivor  and  deputy  of  panic  emotion,  a  belated  case  in  the 
pathology  of  epidemic  grief.  Between  this  mere  iterated  cry, 
as  was  said  above,  and  the  later  professional  song  of  lament,^ 
lie  the  bulk  of  Corsican  voceri,  sung  by  sister  or  mother  of 
the  dead,  and  m*ost  characteristic  when  it  is  a  violent  death 
which  they  deplore  and  when  they  will  stir  to  vengeance  a 
group  of  male  relatives  standing  sullenly  by  the  corpse.  For 
while  a  vocero  in  the  case  of  some  peace-parted  soul,  such  as 
the  village  priest,  is  often  a  decorous  and  comforting  office,^ 
the  passion  of  the  thing  is  felt  only  over  the  bier  of  a  man 
murdered  in  feud.  St.  Victor,  whom  all  the  others  quote  on 
this  point,  describes  the  scene.  At  first,  in  the  chamber  of 
death,  rises  a  great  wail  of  lament,  through  which  oaths  of 
vengeance  flash  like  lightning ;  men  draw  their  daggers,  and 
dash  their  guns  upon  the  stone  floor  ;  women  dip  their  hand- 
kerchiefs in  the  blood  still  oozing  from  the  wounds;^  some- 

1  Manquait  de  tenue,  M.,  pp.  24  f. 

^  See  Marcaggi,  pp.  157,  231,  for  a  voceratrice  celebre.  "  La  voceratrice  marche 
toujours  a  la  tete  des  pleureuses,"  — in  going  to  the  funeral. 

3  Such  is  No.  X.  in  Marcaggi,  a  "  vocero  sung  by  a  woman  in  the  square  of 
Canonica  in  the  midst  of  a  great  crowd  of  women,  priests,  doctors,  and  magistrates 
come  from  neighbour  villages." 

*  A  child  who  does  this,  and  makes  a  vocero,  declares  that  he  will  bind  the 
kerchief  about  his  neck  whenever  he  feels  moved  to  laugh, —  a  grim  bit  which 
throws  into  the  shade  that  "  child  on  the  nourice's  knee  "  of  English  ballads,  who 
vows  revenge  if  he  shall  live  to  be  man. 


234  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

times  they  are  moved  to  a  frenzy  that  vents  itself  in  dancing 
round  the  corpse  amid  loud  cries,  until  silence  is  demanded 
and  the  dead  man's  mother,  wife,  sister,  moves  to  the  bier 
and  begins  her  vocero.  There  is  no  art  in  it ;  "  the  excuse 
for  its  violence  is  in  its  explosive  force,  ...  it  sings  through 
the  mouth  of  a  wound."  It  begins,  however,  in  a  plaintive 
way,  calls  tenderly  upon  the  dead,  then  tells  the  story  of  his 
taking  off ;  now  the  gently  cadenced  movements  of  the 
singer  grow  more  violent,  and  presently  she  breaks  into  a 
storm  of  imprecations  and  into  wild  appeals  for  the  ven- 
detta.^ One  after  another  of  these  singers  improvises  such 
a  lament,  and  for  every  stanza  a  chorus  of  sobs  and  cries 
and  moans,  often,  one  gathers,  of  articulate  words,  rises 
from  the  throng.  The  passion,  too,  is  real ;  readers  who 
come  of  northern  blood  must  banish  certain  associations 
of  the  cardboard  castle,  the  cloak  and  sword,  loud  bari- 
tone confidences,  and  stage  moonlight.  These  voceri  of 
vengeance  are  not  rated  as  rant  by  the  law,  which  often  and 
vainly  tries  to  put  them  down.  Thus  among  the  Basques, 
a  race,  as  George  Borrow  declared,  not  of  poets  but  of  singers, 
laws  were  passed  against  the  old  fashion  of  the  funeral ;  ^  it 
was  forbidden  "to  make  lamentations,  to  tear  one's  hair,  to 
bruise  the  flesh,  to  wound  one's  head,  to  chant  death-songs." 
A  Basque  chorus  of  lament  is  described  by  Michel.  "  All 
the  women  join  in  it  with  deep  sighs  and  cries  of  grief, 
addressed  now  to  the  dead  and  now  to  themselves ;  they 
begin  with  high  tones,  then  fall  into  a  deep  note,  and  pro- 
nounce from  time  to  time  ayen^,  a  Basque  word  which  means 
Alas!''  It  is  quite  clear  that  in  these  repeated  words  of 
the  chorus  one  finds  the  origin  of  the  vocero,  the  "  cry  "  of 

^  On  the  vendetta  in  Italy  during  the  renaissance,  see  Burckhardt,  CuU.  d. 
Rett.,^  II.  179  ff. 

2  J.  F.  Blade,  Dissertation  sur  les  Chants  Historiques  des  Basques,  Paris,  1866, 
pp.  6  ff.;  Borrow,  The  Bible  in  Spain,  1843,  H-  394 '>  I'-  Michel,  Le  Pays  Basque, 
1857,  pp.  277  f. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        235 

communal  grief ;   and   a  study  of  such   cries  at  the  actual 

burial,  as  they  are    still   heard   in  Gascon   funerals,^  shows 

to  what  beginnings  one  must  refer  the  more  elaborate  voceri 

of  the   Corsicans.     As  early  as   1340  a  law  was  passed  at 

Tarbes  against  "cries  and  lamentations  at  the  return  from 

a  burial."     According  to  Blade,  the  Gascon  burial  cries  are 

a  kind    of  recitative,  lacking   rime  and   even  what  modern 

ears  demand  in  the  way  of  rhythm,  for  they  are  now  divorced 

from  the  dance,  and  at  best  are  timed  to  the  steps  of  the 

procession.     They   begin   when    a  funeral  procession  starts 

from  the  church  to  the  cemetery,  and  are  a  series  of  "  distinct 

exclamations  combined  into  irregular  stanzas  " ;  mostly  they 

begin   "in  a  high  note,  falling  slowly,  to  rise  again  at  the 

end."     The  iteration  of  these  cries  is  insistent;  Blade  quotes 

a  long  cri  of  the  sort :  ^  — 

Ah! 
Ah!  Ah!  Ah! 
Ah!  Pauvre! 
Ah!  Pauvre! 
Ah!  Pauvre! 
Mon  Dieu! 
Mon  Dieu!  Mon  Dieu! 

Ah! 
Pauvre  Pere! 
Pauvre  P^re!  Pauvre  Pere! 

Vous  etes  mort,  pauvre  P^re! 
Pauvre  Pere,  vous  etes  mort ! 

Vous  etes  mort! 
Vous  ne  reviendrez  jamais! 

Jamais!  Jamais! 

Then   the    first   stanza   is   repeated.     The   choral   possibili- 
ties of  this  cry  are  clear   enough,  and    sung   to  the    dance 

^"  They  have  not  utterly  disappeared  from  my  country,"  says  Blade,  Poesies 
Populaires  de  la  Gascogne,  introduction  to  Vol.  I.  p.  xi;  and  he  prints  a  collection 
of  them,  pp.  212-231. 

"^  This  is  Blade's  French  rendering,  pp.  212  ff,  Beaurepaire,  work  quoted, 
pp.  24  f.,  says  these  cries  are  no  longer  heard  in  Normandy. 


236  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

about  a  corpse,  as  was  undoubtedly  the  primitive  case,  its 
rhythm  would  have  been  exact  and  no  "recitative."  A 
further  step  is  taken  when  individual  and  artistic  touches 
make  themselves  felt  in  a  pretty  little  cri  which  is  sung  by 
a  mother  ^  over  her  child  :  — 

Pauvret! 
Ah! 
Tu  seras  bien  seulet 
Au  cimitiere 
Cette  nuit, 

Et  moi 
Je  te  pleurerai 
A  la  maison. 

Mon  Dieu! 
Ah! 

Repetition  is  the  original  rhythm,  the  original  poem;  then 
comes  improvisation  by  the  individual,  begetting  the  incre- 
ment and  founding  a  "  text,"  while  variation  plays  upon  the 
repeated  words.  Such  is  the  course  of  poetry,  and  in  par- 
ticular of  the  vocero  ;  repetition  lies  at  the  heart  of  it.  Wetz- 
stein,^  describing  the  Syrian  song  of  lament  sung  by  the 
women,  lays  stress  upon  the  constant  iteration  in  it,  and 
upon  the  chorus  which  consists  mainly  of  a  single  word, 
—  "  woe  !  "  "alas  !  "  —  counterpart  of  the  chorus  in  Corsican 
and  Pasque  voceri.  Indeed,  the  vocero  is  not  only  inscribed 
with  woe,  but  was  once  nothing  else ;  and  fragments  of  this 
or  that  "cry"  of  burial  and  of  death  found  their  way  into 
the  mythology  and  the  recorded  poetry  of  Phoenicians,  of 
Egyptians,  and  of  Greeks.  Brugsch,^  in  his  study  of  the 
songs  about  Adonis  and  Linos,  makes  it  clear  that  Linos 
was  simply  a  personification  of  these  Phoenician  cries  of 
lament,  ai  lenii,  the  choral  "alas!"  or  "woe  to  us!"     The 

1  "The  men,  old  and  young,  take  no  part,"  Blade,  I.  xiii. 

2  "Die  syrische  Dreschtafel,"  Zeiischr.f.  Ethnologic,  V.  (1873),  295  f. 

3  Die  Adonisklage  und  das  Linoslied,  Berlin,  1852,  pp.  16  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        237 

refrain  or  repeated  cry  of  grief  sung  by  mourners  about  their 
dead  finds  thus  both  mythical  and  ritual  projection  and  the 
immortality  insured  by  great  artistic  song.  This  ai,  ai,  seems 
to  be  one  of  the  oldest  choral  funeral  cries,  common,  as 
Brugsch  puts  it,  "to  the  whole  Orient  as  well  as  Egypt"; 
and  he  follows  it  down  to  the  exquisite  elegy  of  Bion. 
Linos,  in  the  vintage  songs,  was  made  a  personification  of 
this  cry,^  became  a  Greek,  was  said  to  be  buried  in  Argos, 
and  was  worshipped  on  Helicon  amid  lamentations  of  matron 
and  maid  gathered  at  the  yearly  festival.  One  remembers 
Ezekiel's  wrath  over  the  women  who,  in  the  gate  of  the 
Lord's  house,  were  weeping  for  Tammuz.  In  the  Egyptian 
lament  of  Isis  for  Osiris,  the  opening  words,  "  Come  back," 
are  repeated,  as  in  the  choral  cry  from  which  it  sprang,  and 
are  in  accord  not  only  with  the  vocero  of  Europe,  but  with 
the  refrain  of  a  dirge  in  India  :^  — 

We  never  scolded  you  ;  never  wronged  you ; 

Come  to  us  back  I  .  .  . 
Come  hotue^  come  home,  come  to  us  again  I 

The  Egyptian  vocero,  the  ai  en  he,  is  worth  quoting  in  full :  ^ 
"  Come  back,  come  back,  God  Panu,  come  back !  For  they 
which  were  against  thee  are  no  more.  Ah,  fair  helper,  come 
back  to  see  me,  thy  sister,  that  love  thee ;  and  drawest  thou 
not  nigh  to  me .''  Ah,  fair  youth,  come  back,  come  back  !  I 
see  thee  not,  my  heart  is  sore  for  thee,  my  eyes  seek  thee. 
I  wander  about  for  thee,  to  see  thee  in  the  form  of  Nai,  to 
see  thee,  to  see  thee,  fair  lord,  in  the  form  of  Nai,  to  see 
thee,  the  fair  one,  —  to  see  thee,  to  see  thee,  God  Panu,  the 
fair  one !  Come  to  thy  darling,  blessed  Ounophris,  come  to 
thy  sister,  come  to  thy  wife,  come  to  thy  wife,  God  Urtuhet, 

^  K.  O.  Mviller,  Gesch.  d.  Griech.  Lit.,  I.  28,  makes  Linos  the  personification  of 
the  soft  spring  slain  by  heats  of  summer. 

2  Quoted  by  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  IL  32. 
2  Taken  from  the  German  rendering  of  Brugsch. 


238  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

come  to  thy  spouse !  I  am  thy  sister,  I  am  thy  mother,  and 
thou  comest  not  to  me  ;  the  face  of  gods  and  of  men  is  turned 
to  thee,  while  they  weep  thee,  seeing  me  that  weep  for  thy 
sake,  that  weep  and  cry  to  heaven  that  thou  hear  my  prayer, 
—  for  I  am  thy  sister  that  loved  thee  on  earth.  Never  lovedst 
thou  another  than  me,  thy  sister !  Never  lovedst  thou  another 
than  me,  thy  sister  !  "  Like  the  companion  lament  of  Neph- 
thys,  this  is  distinctly  a  vocero  of  the  sister  over  the  brother ; 
and  the  repeated  mda-ne-hra,  "come  home,"  the  refrain  of 
the  piece,  gave  rise  to  the  name  Maneros,  fabled  to  be  a 
prince  of  Egypt,  a  fact  which  reminded  Herodotus  of  the 
similar  song  of  Linos  in  Greece.  In  his  chapter  on  the 
Lityerses  song,  Mannhardt  ^  notes  that  this  name,  too,  with 
that  of  Bormos,  both  supposed  to  be  sons  of  a  king,  like 
Maneros,  Linos,  Mannerius,  was  developed  out  of  an  old 
refrain.  The  Greeks,  singing  a  lay  which  corresponded  to 
the  Maneros,  went  with  choral  cries  and  music  to  seek  the 
vanished  Bormos.  So,  too,  with  Hylas ;  a  Bithynian  festival 
is  on  record,  where  sacrifice  is  made  at  the  scene  of  his  cap- 
ture by  the  nymphs ;  and  the  festal  throng  thereupon  wander 
over  the  hills  and  about  the  Hylas  Lake,  crying  incessantly 
upon  his  name.  It  is  needless  to  follow  all  these  myths  and 
the  ritual  connected  with  them ;  nor  can  we  turn  aside  and 
study  the  memorial  festivals  of  the  dead,  like  that  old  Germanic 
feast  in  November,  now  surviving  in  All  Souls'  Day,  where 
masses  said  for  the  repose  of  Christian  dead,  and  flowers  laid 
upon  their  tombs,  took  the  place  of  older  sacrifice,  dance,  and 
song.^  What  one  sees  beyond  question  is  the  origin  of  funeral 
songs  in  the  communal  chorus,  and  what  one  infers  with  great 
probability  is  that  death,  and  the  resulting  expression  of  com- 

"^  Mythologische  Forschungen,  pp.  16,  55.  Herodotus,  II.  79,  distinctly  says 
that  the  Maneros  song  was  of  the  people. 

^  For  the  general  custom,  see  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  II.  36  ff.;  for  Germanic 
relations,  Pfannenschmidt,  Germanische  Rrntefeste,  pp.  165  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        239 

munal  grief  in  choral  song  and  dance,  had  much  more  to  do 
with  earliest  forms  of  poetry  than  even  the  erotic  impulse. 
Sociology  now  declares  that  primitive  feeling  for  children, 
relatives,  clan,  was  far  keener  in  its  emotional  expression 
than  the  sense  of  sexual  desire.^  The  importance  of  the 
love-lyric,  now  overwhelming,  and  mainly  an  individual  out- 
burst, yields  in  primitive  life  to  the  importance  of  the  choral 
vocero  over  a  dead  clansman ;  so  that,  using  the  terms  in  a 
modern  way,  one  must  reverse  that  saying  of  the  preacher : 
it  was  death  that  was  stronger  than  love.  Coming  back  to 
modern  survivals,  one  finds  this  vocero  common,  both  in  its 
individual  and  in  its  choral  form,  among  the  Celts.  Leaving 
the  Ossianic  lament  alone  in  its  gloom,  one  may  take  the 
honest  and  homely  prose  of  Pennant,^  who  made  a  tour 
through  Scotland  in  the  year  1769,  and  saw  a  lyke-wake^ — 
he  calls  it  a  "late-wake"  —  in  the  Highlands.  "The  even- 
ing after  the  death  of  any  person,  the  relatives  and  friends 
of  the  deceased  meet  at  the  house,  attended  by  bagpipe  and 
fiddle ;  the  nearest  of  kin,  be  it  wife,  son,  or  daughter,  opens 
a  melancholy  ball,  dancing  and  greeting,  i.e.  crying  violently, 
at  the  same  time ;  and  this  continues  till  daylight,  but  with 
such  gambols  and  frolics  among  the  younger  part  of  the 
company  that  the  loss  which  occasioned  them  is  often  more 
than  supplied  by  the  consequences  of  that  night."  This  is 
eighteenth-century  humour,  and  an  eighteenth-century  reason 
to  explain  the  hilarity  is  quoted  from  Olaus  Magnus.  Unfor- 
tunately Pennant  did  not  hear  what  he  calls  the  "  Coranich  "  ; 

^  Grosse,  Anfange  der  Ktcnst,  p.  234. 

2  A  Tour  in  Scotland,  3d.  ed.,  Warrington,  1774,  p.  99. 

*  Chaucer,  who  puts  several  home  touches  not  known  to  Boccaccio  or  Statius 
into  his  account  of  the  funeral  of  Arcite  in  the  "  Knight's  Tale,"  speaks  of  the  lyche- 
ivake  as  well  as  of  the  luake-pleyes,  —  the  latter,  of  course,  funeral  games.  Pen- 
nant, by  the  way,  in  his  Second  Tour  in  5tro//aM^(Pinkerton,  IIL  288),  speaking 
of  Islay  and  its  antiquities,  says  "  the  late-wakes  or  funerals  .  .  .  were  attended 
with  sports  and  dramatic  entertainments.  .  .  .  The  subject  of  the  drama  was 
historical  and  preserved  by  memory"     (No  italics  in  the  original.) 


240  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

but  he  learned  that  such  a  song  is  generally  in  praise  of  the 
dead,  a  recital  of  his  deeds  or  the  deeds  of  his  forbears.  Ques- 
tions, too,  were  addressed  to  the  corpse,  why,  for  example, 
he  chose  to  die  —  a  common  trait  of  the  vocero,  already  put 
to  use  by  Chaucerian  humour,^  and  noted  by  old  Camden ; 
Pennant  remarks  that  the  mother  of  Euryalus  makes  the 
same  query.^  But  Pennant  had  heard  such  songs  in  the 
south  of  Ireland ;  and  this  feature  of  an  Irish  wake  is  still 
accessible  to  the  curious.  On  its  native  soil  it  has  been  often 
studied  and  described.^  When  the  corpse  has  been  laid  out, 
"  the  women  of  the  household  range  themselves  at  either 
side,  and  the  keen  {caoine)  at  once  commences.  They  rise 
with  one  accord,  and  moving  their  bodies  with  a  slow  motion 
to  and  fro,  their  arms  apart,  they  .  .  .  keep  up  a  heart-rend- 
ing cry.  This  cry  is  interrupted  for  a  while  to  give  the  ban 
caointhe,  the  leading  keener,  an  opportunity  of  commencing. 
At  the  close  of  every  stanza  of  the  dirge  the  cry  is  repeated." 
The  authors  give  the  air  to  which  keens  are  chanted. 
"The  keen  usually  consists  in  an  address  to  the  corpse,  ask- 
ing him,  'Why  did  he  die  .■' '  —  or  a  description  of  his  per- 
son, qualifications,  riches ;  it  is  altogether  extemporaneous." 
A  note  attributes  the  ease  of  improvisation  to  the  fact  that 
assonance,  "vocal  rime,"  is  enough  to  satisfy  the  needs  of 
Irish  verse.  The  keener  is  often  a  professional  and  paid ; 
sometimes  a  volunteer  and  a  member  of  the  family.  "  Any 
one  present,  however,  who  has  the  gift,  may  put  in  his  or 
her  verse ;  and  this  sometimes  occurs.  .  .  .     Besides  caoines, 

^  See  above,  p.  222. 

^^n.,  X.  473ff. 

8  Perhaps  best  in  Mr.  and  Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall's  Ireland :  its  Scenery,  Character, 
etc.,  3  vols.,  London,  1841-1843.  See  I.  222  ff.  The  authors  mention  the  women 
who  wept  over  Hector,  with  the  odd  explanation  that  the  Greeks  were  once  in 
Ireland.  Other  accounts  of  Irish  funerals  are  quoted  in  Brand-Ellis,  Popular 
Antiquities,  as  of  "  the  men,  women,  and  children  "  who  go  before  the  corpse  and 
"set  up  a  most  hideous  JIoloo,  loo,  loo,  which  may  be  heard  two  or  three  miles 
round  the  country." 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        24 1 

extempore  compositions  over  the  dead,  tJiirrios,  or  written 
elegies,  deserve  mention.  They  are  composed  almost  exclu- 
sively by  men,  as  the  caoincs  are  by  women."  One  thinks 
of  Marcaggi's  poetical  bandits  and  their  written  effusions  as 
compared  with  the  improvised  songs  of  the  voceratrice  over 
her  dead.  It  is  odd  to  see  how  the  zeal  of  certain  antiqua- 
rians would  reverse  the  law  of  nature,  and  make  this  impro- 
vised keen  a  degenerate  form  of  older  and  carefully  composed 
elegies  of  Irish  "bards."  O'Conor  thought  the  old  keen  to 
be  "debased  by  extemporaneous  composition";^  and  a  Mr. 
Blanford  ^  describes  the  degradation  in  detail.  The  keen,  he 
says,  was  once  an  antiphonal  affair  prepared  beforehand,  and 
sung  by  bards  with  the  aid  of  a  chorus,  —  elaborate  in  every 
way.  On  the  decline  of  these  bards,  "  the  Caoinan  fell  into 
the  hands  of  women,  and  became  an  extemporaneous  per- 
formance." Like  the  degeneration  theory  of  ballads,  this 
account  of  the  keen  goes  to  pieces  under  the  test  of  com- 
parative and  historical  studies.  Spenser,  to  be  sure,  speaks 
of  these  bards,  and  not  without  respect ;  ^  but  it  is  clear  that 
the  ancestral  line  of  the  keen  among  Irishmen  runs  back  to 
"  the  lamentations  at  theyr  burialls,  with  dispayrefull  out- 
cryes  and  immoderate  wailings,"  *  which  he  mentions  in  his 
argument  to  prove  that  the  Irish  are  descended  from  the 
Scythians.     Would  that  Spenser  had  not  cut  short  his  tale 

1  Quoted  by  J.  C.  Walker,  Historical  Memoirs  of  the  Irish  Bards,  London, 
1786,  pp.  20  f.  The  keening  of  women  who  follow  the  hearse,  dressed  sometimes 
in  white  and  sometimes  in  black,  "singing  as  they  slowly  proceed  .  .  .  extempore 
odes,"  is  sufficiently  like  the  march  of  the  praeficae  at  a  Roman  funeral;  and  in 
neither  case  has  one  the  primitive  form  of  the  rite. 

2  Transact.  Royal  Irish  Academy,  IV.,  "  Antiquities,"  pp.  41  ff.,  read  December, 
1791. 

^  "  Present  State  of  Ireland,"  Works,  ed.  Morris,  pp.  625  f.  Camden,  about 
the  same  time,  Britannia,  trans.,  ed.  1722,  p.  xix,  speaks  of  the  bards  as  men  who 
"  besides  .  .  .  their  poetic  functions  do  apply  themselves  particularly  to  the 
study  of  genealogies."  See  also  Evan  Evans,  Specimens  of  the  Poetry  of  the 
Antient  IVelsh  Bards,  .  .  .  London,  1764,  p.  91.     This  is  not  primitive  song. 

*  Spenser,  p.  633. 

R 


242  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

"  of  theyr  old  maner  of  marrying,  of  burying,  of  dauncyng,  of 
singing,  of  feasting,  of  cursing,  though  Christians  have  wiped 
out  the  most  part  of  them,''  — best  reason  for  telling  in  detail 
of  all  the  Christians  had  left ! 

Wailings,  cries  now  articulate  and  now  inarticulate,  but 
wrought  by  repetition,  by  the  cadence  of  rocking  bodies,  or 
of  measured  steps,  by  the  spasmodic  utterance  of  extreme 
emotion,  into  a  choral  consent  which  is  not  harmony,  per- 
haps, to  modern  ears,  but  which  has  a  rhythm  of  its  own,  — 
these  are  the  raw  material  of  the  poetry  of  grief.  Like  the 
"  cries  "  at  a  Gascon  burial,  like  the  Irish  keen,  is  the  rauda 
of  Russian  Lithuania,  which  Bartsch^  significantly  calls  "a 
preliminary  stage  of  actual  folksong."  This  rauda  or  daina 
is  sung  by  women  ;  it  lacks  what  one  calls  melody  and  verse ; 
and  it  is  sung  mostly  on  the  way  to  the  burial  or  at  the  grave. 
Praetorius,  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  describes 
the  Lithuanian  zwcero  as  a  mingled  song  and  sob,  with  the 
usual  questions  to  the  corpse,  so  familiar  in  the  Irish  keen  — 
why  did  the  man  die,  had  he  not  enough  to  eat  and  drink,  had 
he  not  clothes  and  shoes  ?  ^  Brand,  who  made  his  tour  in 
1673,  tells  the  same  story;  relatives  and  friends,  however, 
are  here  seated  round  the  corpse,  shrieking  and  howling, 
to  be  sure,  but  in  words  of  a  more  lyric  tone  :  "  Why  hast  thou 

1  "Totenklagen  in  der  litauischen  Volksdichtung,"  Zsi.  f.  vgl.  Litter aturgesch., 
N.  F.,  II.  81  ff. 

'■^  A  similar  series  of  questions,  with  interesting  details  of  the  ceremony,  is  given 
in  the  Itinera  Constantinopolitanum  et  Amasianum  ab  Angerio  Gislenio  Bus- 
bequij  .  .  .  Antverpize,  1681,  p.  28:  "  deuertimus  in  pagum  Semianorum  lagod- 
nam  :  ubi  ejus  gentis  ritus  funebres  vidimus  multum  a  nostris  abhorrentes.  Erat 
cadauer  in  templo  positum  detecta  facie  :  iuxta  erant  apposita  edulia,  panis  et  caro 
et  vini  cantharus :  adstabant  coniunx  et  filia  melioribus  ornata  vestibus,  filiae  gale- 
rius  erat  ex  plumis  pavonis.  Supremum  munus,  quo  maritum  jam  conclamatum 
uxor  donauit,  pileolum  fuit  purpureum,  cuius  modi  virgines  nubiles  illic  gestare 
Solent.  Inde  Icssum  audiuimus  et  naeniam  lamentabilesque  voces;  quibus  mor- 
tuum  percunctabantur  quid  de  eo  tanlum  mertiissent,  quae  res,  quod  ohseqjiium, 
quod  solatium  ei  defuisset ;  cur  se  solas  el  miseras  relingueret :  et  hujus  generis 
a /ill." 


THE    DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL    ELEMENTS         243 

left  us  ?      Whither  art  thou  gone  ?     I  shall  go  to  thee,  but 
thou  wilt  not  come  to  me."  ^ 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  the  origins  of  the  vocero  in 
Europe.  Among  the  Tartar  folk  of  Siberia,  songs  of  lament, 
although  nearly  always  improvised,  have  more  the  character 
of  an  elegy,  and  are  sung  by  the  relatives  of  the  dead  during 
a  full  year  after  the  funeral.^  If  the  husband  dies,  it  is  his 
wife  who  makes  the  song ;  if  son  or  daughter  dies,  it  is  the 
mother ;  while  a  dead  mother  is  sung  by  her  daughter  or  a 
near  female  relative.  Men  sing  these  songs  only  when  a 
rich  or  powerful  person  dies,  and  then  only  at  the  funeral :  ^ 
one  thinks  of  David  over  Jonathan  and  Saul,  and  of  that  old 
king  in  the  Beowulf.  Among  the  Eskimo,  *  however,  occurs 
a  vocero  precisely  like  the  type  which  has  been  found  common 
to  the  primitive  customs  of  Europe,  —  a  song  by  the  near 
relative,  with  chorus  of  moans,  sobs,  and  cries  from  the 
women  who  stand  about.  Coming  to  the  distinctly  savage 
state,  one  finds  material  enough  to  fill  a  book,  all  going  to 
prove  that  a  choral  cry  and  not  an  individual  composition  must 
be  taken  as  starting-point  of  the  vocero.  "  Of  the  Tasmanians, 
Mr.  Davis  relates^  that  '  during  the  whole  of  the  first  night ^ 

^  Compare  the  pathetic  word  of  David  about  his  dead  child :  2  Sam.,  xii.  23. 

2  Spencer,  Sociology,  I.  §  142,  quotes  Bancroft,  of  the  Indians  of  the  West,  that 
for  a  long  time  after  a  death,  relatives  repair  daily  at  sunrise  and  sunset  to  the 
vicinity  of  the  grave,  to  sing  songs  of  mourning  and  praise.  Hahn  tells  the  same 
thing  of  his  Albanians,  Alb.  Stud.,  I.  151  f. 

3  Radloff,  III.  22. 

*  Often  quoted  from  Kranz,  Gr'onlandische  Reise.  See  also  Boas,  "The  Cen- 
tral Eskimo,"  in  Report  Bur.  Etk?i.,  1884-1885,  Washington,  1888,  p.  614. 

*  Quoted  Spencer,  Soc,  III.  §  126. 

^  There  was  also  a  lament  sung  hard  upon  the  death  of  a  warrior  in  battle. 
As  the  Goths  bore  away  their  dead  king,  singing  a  song  of  woe  in  the  midst  of 
flying  weapons,  so  with  many  savages.  In  a  skirmish  which  followed  the  murder 
of  Captain  Cook,  a  young  islander  was  killed,  and  the  Englishmen  next  morning 
saw  "  some  men  carrying  him  off  on  their  shoulders,  and  could  hear  them  singing, 
as  they  marched,  a  mournful  song."  Cook's  Last  Voyage,  in  Pinkerton,  Voyages 
and  Travels,  XI.  723. 


244  "THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

after  the  death  of  one  of  their  tribe  they  will  sit  round 
the  body,  using  rapidly  a  low,  continuous  recitative,  to  pre- 
vent the  evil  spirit  from  taking  it  away.'  "  Naturally 
the  artist  comes  early  upon  the  scene ;  dirges,  eulogies, 
elegies  of  every  sort,  are  built  on  this  choral  foundation ; 
and  that  communal  magic,  if  it  was  anything  more  than  a 
Tasmanian  vocero,  is  soon  replaced  by  the  magic  of  the 
individual  shaman.  To  put  him  in  the  van  of  funeral  lament, 
however,  to  say  that  he  preceded  communal  and  choral 
wailings  for  the  dead,  is  ignoring  the  facts  of  primitive  life 
and  the  instincts  of  human  nature.  Comparetti  makes  the 
magic  songs  of  the  Finns  precede  their  heroic  and  legendary 
verse,  and  this  may  well  be  true ;  but  the  communal  lament 
is  older  than  both,  for,  as  was  seen  in  the  case  of  the  Boto- 
cudos,  primitive  folk  have  no  legend,  no  history,  and  as  for 
the  magic,  while  the  sayings  of  a  shaman  would  get  the 
earliest  record,  they  demand  a  communal  background.  For 
it  is  the  unavoidable  condition  of  all  recorded  literature  that 
what  is  of  the  moment  and  of  the  mass  dies  with  its  occasion ; 
while  only  individual  skill,  the  hand  of  a  single  performer,  is 
moved  to  keep  the  record  of  his  doing  on  purpose  to  a  life 
beyond  life.  Even  the  humblest  shaman,  too,  learns  his  art 
and  his  rude  ritual  from  an  older  artist  in  magic,  ^  and  so  his 
making  becomes  a  tradition  and  his  verses  flit  from  mouth  to 
mouth.  But  the  history  of  religion  has  taught  us  to  look 
elsewhere  than  to  the  temple  and  the  priest  and  the  Deus 
Optimus  Maximus  of  civilized  worship,  if  we  would  find  the 
beginnings  of  cult  and  the  earliest  divinity.  As  we  go  back 
to  a  horde  of  homogeneous  men,  so  we  go  back  to  a  horde  of 
homogeneous  spirits ;  as  one  spirit  rises  above  the  rest,  so 
the  shaman  is  deputed,  with  his  superior  powers,^  to  cope 

1  On  neniae  as  incantations,  see  Grimm,  Mythologie,^  p.  1027. 
*  The  phrase  for  a  capable  person  in  incantation  is  found  for  Germanic  usage 
in  the  Merseburg  Charm,  here  said  of  Wodan  himself,  —  so  he  unola  conda  ;  in 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        245 

with  the  superior  god.  It  was  the  "  we "  of  the  horde,  in 
the  new  sense  of  coherence  and  social  being,  which  started 
that  communal  thinking  and  made  that  communal  belief  in 
the  "they"  of  a  surrounding  and  potent  host  of  spirits;  and 
it  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  communal  appeal, 
sheer  cries  and  leaps  in  some  wild  consent  of  rhythm,  must 
have  begun  those  magic  rites  which  are  perhaps  to  be  sur- 
mised in  no  very  advanced  stage  in  the  songs  of  Mr.  Davis's 
Tasmanians.  Actual  incantations  that  come  down  to  us  are 
full  of  repetition,  and  frequently  have  a  chorus  or  refrain ;  ^ 
elements  that  point  back  to  a  communal  source.  Among 
American  Indians  the  necromantic  songs  abound  in  a  chorus 
which  is  nearly  all  repetition,  like  ^  — 

Na  ha,  Yaw  ne ; 
Na  ha,  Yaw  ne. 

But  it  is  the  vocero  which  we  are  now  to  study  among  sav- 
age tribes.  A  case  or  so  from  Africa  and  Asia  will  do  for 
that  side  of  the  world  —  evidence  is  more  than  abundant  — 
and  then  America  may  tell  its  tale  at  a  time  when  borrowing 
is  out  of  the  question.  M.  Adanson,  a  correspondent  of  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Sciences,  travelled  in  Senegal  about  1750; 

Anglo-Saxon  the  same  phrase  is  used  for  a  skilled  poet:  se  fee  cu^e,  BeoTv.,  90; 

and  in  Old  Saxon  for  a  wise  man  :  eit  gifrbddt  man  the  so  filo  konsta  wisaro  wordo, 

Heliand,  208. 

^  For  example,  in  mere  invocation,  the  Erce,  Erce,  E7-ce,  eoySan  modor  of 

an  Anglo-Saxon  charm  (Grein-Wiilker,  I.  314),  and  the  actual  spell  against  stitch 

in  the  side  {ibid.,  p.  318)  :  — 

Wert  thou  shot  in  the  fell,  or  wert  shot  in  the  flesh, 
Or  wert  shot  in  the  blood  [or  wert  shot  in  the  bone], 
Or  wert  shot  in  the  limb  ,  .  . 

with  more  of  the  sort,  and  the  solemn,  — 

This  to  heal  shot  of  gods,  this  to  heal  shot  of  elves, 
and  so  on,  with  a  refrain  in  the  epic  part,  — 

Out,  little  spear,  if  it  in  here  be' 
2  Schoolcraft,  Indian  Tribes,  I.  367  ff. 


246  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

his  account  ^  of  vocero  and  dance  is  fairly  representative  of 
the  case.  One  night  in  a  village  he  was  awakened  by  a  "  hor- 
rid shrieking,"  and  found  that  a  young  woman  had  just  died. 
What  follows  is  interesting  for  comparison  with  the  custom 
in  modern  Greece.  "  The  first  shriek  was  made,"  says  M. 
Adanson,  "  according  to  custom,  by  one  of  the  female  rela- 
tions of  the  deceased  before  her  door.  At  this  signal,  all 
the  women  in  the  village  came  out  and  set  up  a  most  terrible 
howl,  so  that  one  would  have  thought  they  were  all  related 
to  the  deceased ; "  the  traveller  forgets  that  in  certain  levels 
of  culture  the  clan,  even  the  horde,  is  above  kin.  The  noise 
lasted  till  break  of  day ;  relatives  then  went  into  the  dead 
woman's  cottage,  took  her  hand,  and  asked  her  questions,  — 
the  common  trait  of  the  vocero  everywhere.  When  she  was 
buried,  the  lamentations  ceased ;  but  for  three  nights  the 
young  people  danced  a  memorial  dance.  At  this  the  per- 
formers sang  a  song,  "  the  burden  of  which  was  repeated  by 
all  the  spectators."  Then  follows  the  description  of  certain 
erotic  features  of  the  dance,  and  the  usual  testimony  to  that 
exactness  of  time  observed  in  song  and  movement  and  ges- 
ture. The  vocero  itself  is  mainly  a  lament ;  Mungo  Park 
speaks  of  "the  loud  and  dismal  bowlings,"  another  of  "leap- 
ing and  dancing";  while  in  Loango  relatives  "weep,  sing, 
and  dance  "  about  the  corpse.^  In  Korea,  after  a  night  of 
merriment  the  body  is  carried  to  its  tomb ;  "  the  bearers  sing 
and  keep  time  as  they  go,  whilst  the  kindred  and  friends  .  .  . 
make  the  air  ring  with  their  cries."  ^ 

Interesting  are  the  accounts  of  American  Indians  in  the 
days  of  discovery.  Jean  de  Lery,  a  Frenchman  who  went  to 
Brazil  with  the  Protestant  emigrants  in  the  sixteenth  century, 

1  Translated  from  the  French  in  Pinkerton's  Voyages  and  Travels,  XVI. 
598  ff.     See  pp.  623  f. 

2  Ibid.,  XVI.  877,  685,  596. 
' //./V.,  VII.  534. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        247 

and  wrote  an  account  of  his  journey,^  was  struck  by  the  like- 
ness between  the  funeral  laments  made  by  savages,  and  the 
voceri  of  the  women  of  Beam  singing  over  their  dead  hus- 
bands. He  quotes  one,  a  good  document.  '"La  mi  amou,  La 
mi  amou :  Cara  rident,  ceil  de  splendou  :  Cama  leng6,  bet 
dansadou :  Lo  me  balen,  Lo  m'esburbat :  Mati  depes :  fort 
tard  au  Iheit.'  That  is  to  say,  '  my  love,  my  love,  laughing 
face,  fine  eye,  light  limb,  brave  dancer,  valiant  mien,  lovely 
mien,  early  up  and  late  to  bed.'  "  So  too  the  Gascon  women  : 
'"  Yere,  yere,  o  le  bet  renegadou,  o  le  bet  iougadou  qu  'here  ' : 
that  is  to  say,  '  O  the  brave  Protestant,  O  the  brave  player 
that  he  was  ! '  And  so  do  our  poor  American  women,  who, 
besides  a  refrain  for  each  stanza,^  always  throw  in  a  '  He  is 
dead,  he  is  dead,  for  whom  we  now  are  mourning,'  whereupon 
the  men  respond  and  say :  *  Alas,  it  is  true ;  we  shall  never 
see  him  more  until  we  are  behind  the  mountains,  where,  as 
our  Caribs  tell  us,  we  shall  dance  with  him' — and  other 
things  of  the  sort,  which  they  add  in  their  response."  Les- 
carbot,^  quoting  Lery  about  the  Brazilians,  remarks  the 
agreement  in  songs  of  lament  between  them  and  the  Cana- 
dians "fifteen  hundred  leagues  away."      Such  a  song  ran  — 

He  he  he  he  h^  he  h^  he  he  he, 

a  monotonous  performance  on  paper,  with  the  no\.Q,^fa  fa  sol 
fa  fa  sol  sol  sol  sol  sol,  not  too  elaborate  music  ;  but  bodily 
graces  made  up  for  this,  since  they  then  "  shrieked  and  cried 
in  fearful  wise  the  space  of  a  quarter-hour,  and  the  women 
leaped  into  the  air  with  such  violence  as  to  foam  at  the 
mouth."    Then  once  more  the  tuneful  mood  began,  and  they 

1  Histoire  d^un  Voyage  fait  en  la  Terre  de  Bresil  autrement  dite  Amerique 
...  a  la  Rochelle,  MDLXXVII.  pp.  336  f. 

2  "Au  surplus  au  refrein  de  chacune  pose." 

3  Histoire  de  la  nouvelle  France,  Paris,  MDCIX.  See  pp.  691  ff.  On  the 
title-page  he  declares  himself  "  temoin  oculaire  d'une  partie  des  choses  ici 
recitees." 


248  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

sang,  "  Heu  heiiraiire  heiira  heiiraiire  heiira  heiira  onech." 
In  this  song  they  are  mourning  for  their  dead  parents.  As  with 
Lery  and  Lescarbot,  so  the  spirit  of  comparison  is  astir  in 
Lafitau,^  who,  however,  has  less  to  tell  of  folklore  at  home, 
and  a  great  deal  to  say  of  the  ancients,  as  may  be  gathered 
from  the  title  of  his  book  ;  the  laments  for  the  dead  he  calls 
nhiieSy  and  speaks  of  the  "  matron  "  who  plays  the  part  of 
praefica.  He  tells,  however,  a  plain  story  of  the  savage 
customs.  When  a  corpse  has  been  dressed  and  laid  in  state, 
tears  and  lamentations,  restrained  up  to  that  time,  begin  to 
break  forth,  but  in  order  and  cadence.  The  "  matron  "  leads 
the  other  women,  who  "  follow  in  the  same  measure,  but  use 
different  words,  according  to  the  relation  ivJiich  they  bear  to  the 
deceased^'  —  second  stage  of  the  vocero,  with  a  survival  of 
the  chorus,  however,  far  more  pronounced  than  in  Corsica. 
Men,  too,  mourn  their  dead,  but  in  a  nobler  way,  singing  the 
death-song  and  dancing  the  hereditary  dance ;  ^  but  these 
voceri  of  the  women  are  of  great  interest.  Grosse^  quotes 
from  Grey  the  Australian  vocero  for  a  young  man,  where 
"the  young  women  sing  —  'My  young  brother,'  —  the  old 
women  sing  —  'My  young  son,'  —  and  all  in  chorus  sing  — 
*  Never  shall  I  see  thee  again,  Never  shall  I  see  thee 
again. '  " 

In  Schoolcraft's*  time  things  had  undergone  no  great 
change ;    for  "  every  person  aggrieved  makes  his  own  com- 

^  Mneurs  des  Sauvages  Afneriquians,  Cotnparees  aux  Mceurs  des  Premieres 
Temps,  ...  2  vols.,  4to,  Paris,  1724.  See  II.  321.  Lafitau  spent  five  years  in 
a  mission  in  Canada,  and  also  got  information  from  a  brother  Jesuit  of  sixty  years' 
experience  in  the  new  world  (T.  2).  It  was  this  book  which  moved  Dr.  John 
Brown,  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  to  write  his  essay  on  the  history  of  poetry  and 
music,  and  to  use  so  effectively  the  comparative  method  in  literature. 

2  Ibid.,  11.  395. 

'  Anf.  d.  K.,  p.  229. 

♦  Indian  Tribes,  IV.  71,  question  254  (see  I.  556)  :  "Is  it  the  custom  to  call 
on  certain  persons  for  these  laments?  Are  the  laments  themselves  of  a  poetic 
character?"     Answered  by  Mr.  Fletcher  for  the  Winnebago  Indians. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        249 

plaint,  and  it  is  pitiful  to  see  a  married  person  commence 
wailing  and  singing  kitchina  takah,  then  wailing  again  kit- 
china,  —  'men's  friend.'  These  are  all  the  words,"  —  a  sig- 
nificant fact.  "  The  same  way  in  other  deaths  the  deceased 
is  bewailed."  Here  is  the  single  vocero ;  but  it  is  a  faint 
affair  in  comparison  with  the  volume  and  sound  of  the 
funeral  chorus.  Schoolcraft's  evidence  all  runs  this  way. 
"  Choruses,"  says  Mr.  Fletcher,^  "  are  about  all  the  Indians 
sing."  Carver,^  to  be  sure,  like  the  other  travellers,  tells  of  a 
mother  who  seemed  to  improvise  a  song  of  lament  over  her 
dead  child  at  the  time  when  it  was  laid  among  the  branches ; 
but  he  is  emphatic  about  the  chorus,  and  calls  it  "  a  not 
unpleasing  but  savage  harmony."  A  recent  writer,^  noting 
the  monotonous  choral  songs  at  funerals,  thinks  "  these 
chants  may  no  doubt  occasionally  have  been  simply  wailing 
or  mourning  ejaculation."  As  one  comes  to  lower  levels  of 
culture,  among  the  Patagonians,  for  example,  and  the  interior 
tribes  of  Africa,  mere  choral  iteration  of  monotonous  sounds 
and  beating  the  ground  with  the  feet  —  perhaps  not  so  much 
"  to  keep  off  the  evil  one  "  *  as  to  find  the  communal  consent  — 
are  the  prevailing  characteristics  of  the  vocero.  The  funeral 
dance  of  the  Latuka,  which  Baker  saw,^  really  comes  to  this ; 
while  the  feathers,  the  bells,  the  horns,  are  easily  recognized 
as  lendings  of  an  incipient  culture,  and  teach  the  plain  lesson 
that  the  state  of  the  African  savage  is  not  to  be  transferred 
outright  to  primitive  man.  Indeed,  it  is  quite  evident  that 
such  perfect  consent  of  communal  voice  and  step  as  was 
shown  by  the  Botocudos  may  be  confused  and  broken  in 
what  one  must  call  higher  stages  of  culture,  —  for  example, 

1  Ibid.,  answer  to  question  253. 

2  Three  Years'    Travel  through  the  Interior  Parts  of  North  America  (1766- 
1768),  Philadelphia,  1796.     See  p.  179. 

3  Rep.  Bureau  EthnoL,  I.  194  f. 

*  Wallaschek,  Prim,  Mus.,  p.  54. 
5  Ibid.,  p.  198. 


250  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

that  dance  of  the  Latuka.  In  Nubia  Miss  Edwards^  saw  a 
ceremony,  mainly  dance,  at  the  grave  of  a  member  of  the 
tribe,  which  seemed  to  her  artificial  in  the  extreme.  "  The 
lamentation  itself  is  a  definite  musical  phrase  executed  by 
women  who,  beginning  on  a  high  note,  proceed  down  the 
scale  in  third-tones  to  the  lower  octave  or  even  the  twelfth. 
It  is  taught,  like  the  sagJiarect,  or  cry  of  joy,  by  mothers  to 
their  young  daughters  in  their  earliest  years."  It  is  only 
when  the  historian  looks  at  all  this  evidence  of  savage  dance 
and  cry,  of  feminine  song  and  choral  response,  of  refrain 
passing  into  rite  and  myth,  of  detached  and  artistic  lament, 
and  when  he  applies  to  it  the  evolutionary  test,  the  compara- 
tive and  historical  test,  that  it  hes  in  true  perspective  and 
allows  him  to  draw  some  definite  conclusion  about  one  at  least 
of  the  beginnings  of  poetry.  The  iwcero  began  as  communal 
wailing,  horde  or  clan  or  house  mourning  the  brother  and 
inmate  in  rhythmic  cries  to  the  cadence  of  the  dance ;  with 
new  domestic  ties  of  blood,  in  which  of  course  the  mother 
and  sister  are  supreme,^  these  two  stand  out  as  singers  of  the 
solitary  vocero  to  which  the  crowd  makes  answer  in  refrain. 
The  inevitable  sundering  of  individual  and  chorus  now  makes 
headway,  the  former  passing  into  literature,  the  latter,  drop- 
ping its  concomitant  dance  and  surviving  as  refrain,  dies 
slowly  out  in  all  save  a  few  isolated  communities,  and  in  all 
recorded  verse  except  here  and  there  a  chanted  dirge.  But 
in  each  of  these  diverging  fortunes,  as  in  the  earliest,  so  in 
the  last  estate  of  the  vocero,  in  elegy,  threnody,  ode,  one 
common  trait  abides ;  and  everywhere  it  echoes  the  insistent 

1  Wallaschek,  Prim.  Mus.,  p.  199.  It  is  needless  to  insist  on  the  custom  of 
dancing  at  funerals,  and,  in  memorial  rites,  over  the  graves  of  the  dead;  medioeval 
councils  were  full  of  warning  against  this  habit.  The  "  dance  of  death,"  of  course, 
became  symbolic  and  artistic. 

2  Denied  as  a  literal  fact,  as  an  affair  of  government  and  authority, 
the  matriarchate,  so  called,  is  sufficiently  proved  as  the  early  form  of  family 
life. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL  ELEMENTS        25 1 

voice  of  repetition.^  As  an  example  of  this  repetition,  as  well 
as  of  the  vocero  in  its  earlier  stage,  we  may  conclude  with  an 
iterated  verse  sung  by  a  negro  woman,  once  a  slave,  who 
still  lived  with  her  master's  family  in  the  South.^  She  had 
just  buried  her  husband,  but  went  about  her  tasks  as  usual 
and  waited  upon  the  children  of  the  house.  Suddenly,  how- 
ever, in  their  presence,  and  to  their  great  fright,  she  burst 
out  with  these  words,  — 

O  dem  ropes  dat  let  him  down! 

and  continued  to  sing  them  without  ceasing,  in  a  strange 
crooning  way,  the  better  part  of  an  hour,  and  at  intervals 
during  some  days.  It  were  to  consider  too  curiously,  per- 
haps, if  one  should  compare  this  crude  case  of  "vision"  with 
certain  forms  of  poetry  that  bear  a  similar  relation  to  the 
original  song  of  grief. 

So  much  for  the  vocero.  It  has  led  us  from  the  ballads 
back  to  that  ethnological  evidence  making  so  strongly,  in 
diction  as  in  rhythm,  for  the  primitive  note  of  iteration, 
for  the  fundamental  element  which  marks  the  communal 
origin  of  poetry,  precisely  as  variation  has  marked  its  indi- 
vidual and  artistic  course.  Repetition  of  sounds,  when 
joined  with  act  of  labour,  with  march  or  dance,  with  strong 
emotion  of  a  festal  or  communal  kind,  made  possible  the 
perception  of  consent,  or,  to  speak  with  Professor  Baldwin 
Brown,  of  order.  It  begets  this  sense  of  order  in  other 
arts ;    repetition  of  a  certain  kind  of  line  on  a  jar  made  a 

^  As  the  clan  or  horde  had  its  song  of  triumph,  and  this  is  echoed  and  prolonged 
in  "  national "  songs  like  the  Marseillaise,  or,  better,  the  Ca  ira,  so  the  clan  grief 
can  expand  into  a  national  lament.  Something  of  this  sort  is  found  in  that  wail 
over  the  downfall  of  their  power  sung  by  the  Moors  in  Spain  and  so  potent  to  stir 
the  heart  that  it  was  forbidden  by  government;  its  refrain,  IVoe  is  me,  Alhama, 
has  all  the  iterated  passion  of  grief  that  one  finds  in  the  primitive  vocero.  Then 
there  is  the  song  or  psalm  of  the  captives  in  Babylon,  —  and  the  list  could  be 
extended  indefinitely. 

2  The  story  is  at  first  hand. 


252  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

rhythm  of  decoration,  just  as  a  series  of  similar  groups  of 
words,  of  steps,  made  poetry  and  dance.  How  important 
repetition  must  have  been  in  early  poetry,  and  in  any  un- 
recorded verse,  is  clear  when  one  reflects  that  the  invention 
of  writing  turned  poetry  from  an  art  wholly  of  time  and 
succession  to  an  art  half  plastic ;  we  see  the  line,  the  stanza, 
nowadays,  and  repetition  is  an  impertinence  in  poetry,  be- 
cause hearing  has  become  a  secondary  and  imagined  pro- 
cess. The  aesthetic  value  of  repetition  in  primitive  verse 
gets  a  new  aspect  when  one  considers 

Wie  das  Wort  so  wichtig  dort  war, 
Weil  es  ein  gesprocheii  Wort  war ; 

although  that  other  protest  is  right  enough  for  one  who  has 
only  modern  poetry  in  view :  — 

Im  Anfang  war  das  Wort?  .  .  . 
Ich  kann  das  Wort  so  hoch  unmoglich  schatzen. 

For  repetition  as  the  main  element  in  savage  poetry  it  is 
useless  to  spread  out  evidence ;  no  one  denies  the  fact,  and 
ethnology  is  full  of  it.  From  surviving  incremental  repeti- 
tion, as  in  the  Kalevala  and  in  the  ballads,  one  passes  back, 
with  the  increment  steadily  diminishing,  to  outright  and  un- 
relieved iteration.  The  Africans  have  songs,  some  of  them 
known  as  "national,"  which  consist  of  a  single  word,  arranged 
in  rude  rhythmic  groups,  repeated  for  hours ;  and  they  get 
as  much  satisfaction  from  it  as  presumably  those  Ephesians 
got  out  of  their  own  vehement  and  repeated  cry.  Lery 
and  Lescarbot  heard  these  songs  of  an  iterated  word. 
Lafitau  ^  says  that  Father  Marquette  saw  Indians  dance  the 
calumet  dance,  and  was  surprised  "  that  the  slave  in  singing 
said  nothing  but  the  single  word  Al/ehna,"  —  of  course  an 
accidental  coincidence  of  sounds,  —  "pronouncing  the  ti  after 
the  Italian  fashion,  and  dividing  the  word  into  two  parts." 

1  Work  quoted,  II.  324. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        253 

The  iterated  word  in  primitive  song  has  its  meaning  some- 
where, but  often  shades  back  into  an  inarticulate  sound,  and 
shades  forward  into  a  traditional  and  unintelligible  cry,  mere 
relief  of  emotion.  Perhaps  words  of  this  sort  went  with  the 
"  detestable  air  "  which  Mary  Shelley  heard  at  \hz  festas  near 
her  house  in  Italy. ^  The  countryfolk,  "  like  wild  savages, 
...  in  different  bands,  the  sexes  always  separate,  pass  the 
whole  night  in  dancing  on  the  sands  close  to  our  door,  run- 
ning into  the  sea,  then  back  again,  all  the  time  yelling  one 
detestable  air  at  the  top  of  their  voices,  —  the  most  detest- 
able air  in  the  world."  The  favourite  song  of  the  Boto- 
cudos,  their  lyric  mainstay,  was  just  Kdldui  alia,  repeated 
indefinitely.  The  chorus  of  Indian  war-songs,  in  North 
America,  "consists  for  the  most  part  of  traditionary  mono- 
syllables which  appear  to  admit  often  of  transposition,  and 
the  utterance  of  which,  at  least,  is  so  managed  as  to  per- 
mit the  words  to  be  sung  in  strains  to  suit  the  music  and 
dance."  ^  Dr.  Brinton,  in  a  summary  of  the  characteristics 
of  American  aboriginal  poetry,^ — which  was  always  sung, — 
noting  that  repetition  ^is  the  groundwork,  says  that  this  ele- 
ment of  iteration  has  two  forms :  a  verse  is  sung  repeatedly, 
which  of  course  makes  some  statement,  or  there  is  a  re- 
peated refrain;  but  this  refrain  is  wholly  interjectional  and 
meaningless.  The  Fuegians  often  sing  not  so  much  as  a 
word,  but  only  a  syllable  repeated  forever.  Progress  is  in 
the  text,  and  by  the  individual ;  communal  reminiscence  is 
in   the   refrain :    it   is    clear,   then,   that    the   refrain    is   the 

^  Account  of  Shelley's  last  days,  quoted  in  Harper^ s  Magazine,  April,  1892, 
p.  786. 

2  Schoolcraft,  III.  326,  "  Poetic  Development  of  the  Indian  Mind.''  For  a 
good  collection  of  facts  about  iterated  words  as  song,  see  the  sixth  cliapter  of 
Wallaschek's  Primitive  Music.  For  example,  p.  173,  "The  Macusi  Indians  in 
Guiana  amuse  themselves  for  hours  with  singing  a  monotonous  song,  whose 
words,  hai-a,  hai-a,  have  no  further  significance."     See  also  pp.  54,  56  f. 

3  Report  Proceed.  Numistn.  and  Antiquar.  Soc,  Philadelphia,  1887,  pp.  18  f. 
(Printed  1891.) 


254  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY 

original  "  poem,"  and  to  the  refrain  one  must  look  for  an 
idea  of  beginnings.  A.  W.  SchlegeP  conjectured  that  the 
earliest  forms  of  lyric  poetry  were  due  to  an  "effort  of  the 
human  heart  to  express  a  feeling  or  mood  and  to  give  it 
permanence  by  tone  and  rhythm,"  this  effort  resulting  at  first 
"in  simple  words  and  interjections  often  repeated."  These 
are  kept  in  the  chorus  or  refrain ;  incremental  repetition,  as 
was  shown  above,  works  its  way  in  the  text.  The  chorus, 
to  be  sure,  rises  soon  to  the  dignity  of  a  coherent  sentence ; 
but  its  communal  and  retrograde  force  still  is  strong,  and 
it  insists  on  naked  repetition,  while  individual  singers 
cherish  the  increment.  Miss  Kingsley^  heard  the  Bubis 
sing  in  chorus  over  and  over  for  hours  this  verse  and 
nothing  more,  — 

The  shark  bites  the  Bubi's  hand. 

A  more  advanced  stage  is  seen  in  the  cautious  but  distinct 
incremental  repetition  of  a  singer  among  the  North  Ameri- 
can Indians;  we  quote  from  Schoolcraft:^  — 

Ningah  peendegay  aindahyaig : 
We  he  hevvay  .   .   .  ■* 

That  is,  "  I  will  walk  into  somebody's  home."  The  follow- 
ing words  proceed  very  cautiously.  "  The  composer  appears 
to  commence  with  delicacy  .  .  .  singing  that  he  would  walk 
into  some  indefinite  home.  The  next  line  implies  that  he 
will  walk  into  his  or  her  home.     In  the  third  line  ...  he 

^Lectures,  as  quoted,  II.  117,  speaking  of  poetry  before  Homer.  On  the 
origin  of  poetry  in  unintelligible  sounds,  see  Ragusa-Moleti,  Poesie  dei  Popoli 
Selvaggi,  Torino-Palermo,  189 1,  pp.  vi  ff.,  and  Jacobowski,  Anf'dnge  der  Poesie, 
p.  66,  who  assumes  that  early  man  held  fast  to  those  tones  and  gestures  which 
expressed  an  original  sensation  or  emotion.  On  the  repetition  of  mere  sounds  to 
express  emotion,  see  Alice  C.  Fletcher,  Journal  American  Folklore,  April-June, 
1898,  p.  87. 

2  Travels  in  West  Africa,  pp.  66  f. 

'  V,  559  ff.     "Original  Words  of  Indian  Songs  literally  translated." 

*"  Choral  chant,  four  times  repeated."  All  Schoolcraft's  examples  here  are 
full  of  repetition. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        255 

will  walk  into  her  home  during  some  night.  He  then  in- 
forms her  that  he  will  walk  into  her  dwelling  during  the 
winter.  In  the  fifth  line  "  —  it  is  really  a  stanza,  with  that 
eternal  chorus  —  "  he  becomes  decisive  and  bold,  and  says 
he  will  walk  into  her  lodge  this  night."  So,  too,  the  war- 
rior sings :  ^  — 

I  will  kill,  I  will  kill, 

The  Americans  I  will  kill  ! 

But  the  repeated  air  of  that  "  cereal  chorus,"  ^  when  a  girl 
gets  a  crooked  ear  at  the  husking,  has  the  stricter  note :  — 

Wagemin,  wagemin, 

Paimosaid : 
Wagemin,  wagemin, 

Paimosaid. 

The  work  of  developing  poetry  from  a  rhythmic  chaos  of 
wild  and  repeated  cries  up  to  a  chorus  of  this  kind  was  a 
communal  achievement ;  art  is  responsible  for  increment  and 
variation.  Communal  consent  in  rhythm  caused  the  repeti- 
tion of  more  or  less  articulate  sounds,  and  so  developed  that 
most  important  element  in  primitive  speech  now  known  as 
emphasis.  Repetition,  which  is  modern  emphasis  in  sections, 
marks  the  event  or  sensation  which  it  records  as  something 
out  of  the  common,  holds  it  in  the  ear  and  before  the  mind 
as  something  to  note  and  to  keep  noting,  and  so  makes  for 
memory,  not  idly  called  the  mother  of  the  muses,  while  it 
heightens  the  actual  emotional  state.  Just  as  certain  early 
efforts  of  plastic  art  expressed  great  wisdom  by  several 
heads,  great  strength  by  a  number  of  hands,  great  fecundity 
by  many  breasts,  so  early  man  by  the  iteration  of  a  word  gave 
it  poetic  force ;  a  better  art  seeks  perfection  of  the  single  fea- 
ture, and  fitness  of  the  single  word.  It  has  been  shown 
already   how   poetry   made    a    gain    when    repetition    of   a 

1  Ibid.,  III.  328.  2  ii^id,^  V.  563  f.     See  below,  p.  310. 


256  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

certain  number  of  sounds  gave  ease  to  the  instinct  for  har- 
mony, and  a  yet  greater  gain  when  the  regular  recurrence  of 
a  louder  sound  or  a  longer  sound  satisfied  the  craving  for  finer 
distinctions ;  ^  it  has  been  shown  how  the  mere  zeal  of  repeti- 
tion was  crossed  by  increment  and  variation,  until  the  oldest 
element  of  poetry  was  made  superfluous  in  the  plainer  form 
and  was  almost  utterly  driven  out  of  diction,  with  no  refuge 
but  rhythm  and  certain  forms  of  lyric  sacred  and  profane.  In 
this  plain  and  outright  form  of  repeated  words,  however,  it 
lingered  long  in  ballads,  in  festal  rites,  and  of  course  among 
the  savages ;  it  is  in  the  refrain,  therefore,  that  one  can  still 
find  some  hints  of  the  actual  beginnings  of  poetry.  The 
refrain  has  been  touched  incidentally  in  the  treatment  of 
repetition;  it  is  now  to  be  considered  for  itself. ^  Impor- 
tant as  it  is  in  ballads,  the  refrain  has  even  weightier  mean- 
ings when  studied  in  what  may  be  called  the  occasional  poetry 
of  the  people. 

The  refrain,  which  in  its  communal  function  survives  as 

^  See  above  on  Rhythm.  In  addition  to  the  references  given  there,  see  some 
sensible  remarks  in  Emerson's  "  Poetry  and  Imagination  ";  for  scientific  discussion 
of  repetition  as  basis  of  rhythm,  see  Gurney,  Power  of  Sound,  pp.  455  f.,  and 
Masing,  i'lher  Ursprung  u.  Verbreitung  des  Reims,  pp.  9  f.  J.  Grimm  pointed  out 
that  alliteration  is  really  a  form  of  repetition,  Kl.  Schr.,  VI.  161  f.  Adam  Smith, 
Essays,  pp.  154  f.,  has  some  curious  remarks  on  repetition  as  possible  in  music,  but 
impossible  in  poetry. 

'^  W.  von  Biedermann,  in  two  articles,  —  "  Zur  vergleichenden  Geschichte  der 
poetischen  Formen,"  Zeitschr.  f.  Vergl.  Litteraturgcsch.,'^.  F.,  II.  415  ff. ;  IV. 
224  ff.,  and  "  Die  Wiederholung  als  Urform  der  Dichtung  bei  Goethe,"  ibid.,  IV. 
267  ff.,  —  traces  the  development  of  poetical  style  from  this  fundamental  fact  of 
repetition.  First,  simple  words  were  repeated,  then  only  part  of  the  words  in  a 
sentence :  such  is  the  case  in  old  Chinese,  in  Zend,  in  Accadian.  Then  came 
parallelism;  then  the  repetition  of  similar  sounds;  and  finally  metre  or  rhythm 
(  P'ersmass).  Where  were  the  dancing  throngs  in  this  interesting  stretch  of  devel- 
opment, with  rhythm  as  an  afterclap  of  rime?  As  later  in  his  review  of  Biicher's 
Arbeit  und  Rhytlimus,  so  here,  Biedermann  denies  that  rhythm  came  into  poetry 
through  music  and  the  dance.  He  fails,  however,  to  make  good  this  assertion  by 
any  show  of  proof  (see  above,  p.  75)  ;  but  his  references  are  useful  for  the  student 
of  repetition.  For  another  scheme  of  repetition  in  poetry,  see  R.  M.  Meyer,  Ali- 
germanische  Poesie,  pp.  12  f. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        257 

repetition  pure  and  simple  practised  by  the  throng,  and  in 
its  artistic  function  has  come  to  be  the  means  of  marking  off 
a  strophe  or  stanza,  is  really  the  discredited  and  impover- 
ished heir  of  that  choral  song  which  by  general  consent 
stands  at  the  beginning  of  all  poetry.  This  choral  song, 
under  the  influence  of  art  and  the  reflecting,  remembering, 
individual  mind,  was  developed  into  such  forms  of  epic, 
drama,  lyric,  as  meet  us,  more  or  less  divested  of  communal 
traits  and  conditions,  on  the  threshold  of  every  national 
literature.  Greek  tragedy  is  a  well-known  case  in  point. 
The  refrain,  however,  is  not  a  development  but  a  survival,^ 
so  far,  at  least,  as  communal  conditions  are  involved ;  and 
even  in  ballads  what  is  called  the  refrain  or  the  burden  is  a 
slowly  yielding  communal  element  fighting  hopelessly  against 
invading  elements  of  art.  In  other  words,  as  the  ballad 
recedes  into  primitive  conditions,  the  refrain  grows  more  and 
more  insistent,  so  that  for  the  earliest  form  of  the  ballad,  now 
nowhere  to  be  found,  but  easy  to  reconstruct  by  the  help  of 
an  evident  evolutionary  curve,  one  must  assume  not  the 
refrain  as  such,  but  rather  choral  song  outright.  Different 
altogether  from  this  communal  survival  is  the  artistic  use  of 
the  refrain.  The  extreme  of  art  and  often  of  artifice  is 
reached  in  those  forms  of  verse  which  were  developed  out  of 
the  older  minstrelsy  of  France,  and  are  known  as  ballade, 
rondel,  triolet,  chant  royal,  with  a  refrain  as  their  distinguish- 
ing feature  ;  it  is  conceded,  however,  that  in  the  first  instance 
this   refrain    was    everywhere    taken    from    popular   song.  ^ 

^  Hence  the  inadequate  character  of  its  treatment,  say  for  Old  Norse,  by 
Vigfusson  and  Powell,  Corp.  Poet.  Bar.,  I.  451  ff.  R,  M.  Meyer,  Altgerm.  Poesie, 
p.  341,  takes  a  more  excellent  way,  but  he  lays  too  much  stress  on  the  ancient 
refrain,  and  not  enough  on  the  ancient  choral  and  the  primitive  communal  con- 
ditions of  song.  Much  more  to  the  point  is  the  admirable  though  incomplete 
chapter  on  "Early  Choral  Song"  in  Posnett's  Comparative  Literature:  see 
especially  pp.  127  ff. 

^  Wolf,  Lais,  pp.  23  f.  The  refrain  was  insistent  in  all  poetry  of  the  trouba- 
dours and  trouveres,  and  so  leads  back  to  refrains  as  the  prevalent  characteristic 
s 


258  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Learned  poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages,^  to  be  sure,  imitated  not 
the  vernacular  refrain,  but  the  refrain  of  classical  verse ;  this, 
however,  in  its  turn  had  been  taken  from  the  poetry  of  the 
people,  and,  whether  one  considers  the  Hymen,  O  Hynienaee 
of  Catullus,^  or  the  later  Cras  aniet  qui  nunqimni  amavit, 
which  trips  so  featly  through  the  Pervigilium  Veneris^  and 
keeps  such  true  step  with  the  popular  rhythm  of  its  stanzas, 
is  at  no  great  remove  from  communal  song. 

But  refrains  of  artistic  poetry  are  of  subordinate  interest  for 
our  study  of  primitive  verse ;  and  it  is  clear  that  all  investiga- 
tions which  neglect  the  older  and  more  popular  phases,  which 
neglect  the  primitive  choral  song  and  the  primitive  communal 
conditions,  can  lead  to  no  valid  conclusions  about  the  refrain. 
It  is  something,  of  course,  when  Bujeaud  explains  this  or 
that  refrain  of  a  modern  song  as  imitated  from  sounds  of 
some  musical  instrument,  or  taken  from  the  argot  of  the 
streets  ;  ^  but  when  Rosi^res  ^  undertakes  to  tell  the  whole 

of  all  songs  in  the  vernacular.  See  Wolf's  references,  pp.  22  ff.,  and  notes, 
pp.  184  ff.  For  a  modern  study  of  this  development  of  artistic  forms  of  the 
refrain,  see  the  third  chapter  of  the  third  part  of  Jeanroy's  excellent  Origines  de 
la  Poesie  Lyrique  en  France  au  Aloyen  Age,  Paris,  1889. 

1  Ebert,  Lit.  d.  Mittelalters,  II.  63  f.,  64  note. 

2  See  Ixi,  Ixii.     The  Hymen  cry,  taken  from  the  Greek,  was  there  a  lending  of 

communal  wedding  songs :  see  Smythe,  Greek  Melic  Poets,  p.  496,    More  artistic 

refrains  are  the  .  . 

Currite  ducentes  subtegmina,  curnte,  fusi, 

of  Catullus,  Ixiv.  323  ff.,  and  the  recurrent  lines  in  Spenser's  Prothalamion  and 
Epithalamium,  which,  of  course,  are  on  the  same  artistic  plane  with  that  mar- 
riage-song of  Peleus  and  Thetis. 

8  Walter  Pater's  pleasant  account  of  the  making  of  this  song  {Marius  the  Epi- 
curean, p.  73)  is  not  improbable,  in  spirit  at  least;  and  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  this  was  the  metre  of  marching  songs  of  Roman  soldiers  and  other  popular 
verse.  See  Du  Mcril,  Poesies  Populaires  I.atines,  Paris,  1S43,  pp.  106-1 17,  includ- 
ing the  Pervigilium   Veneris. 

*  ]5ujeaud,  "  Refrains  des  Chansons  Populaires,"  in  I.e  Courier  Litteraire,  25 
Mai,  1877,  pp.  256  ff.  For  reference  to  this  article,  the  present  writer  is  indebted 
to  Boynton's  dissertation,  named  and  quoted  below. 

5  "  Le  Refrain  dans  '.a  Litterature  du  Moyen  Age,"  in  Revue  des  Traditions 
Populaires,  III.  I  ff.;  82  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        259 

story  of  the  refrain,  and  settle  its  origins  beyond  doubt,  saying 
now  that  it  "springs  from  the  periodic  return  of  full  sounds," 
now  that  it  is  a  tra-la-la  to  take  the  place  of  musical  instru- 
ments, now  that  it  is  "a  little  poem  stuck  in  all  the  fissures  of 
a  big  poem,"  and  now,  with  a  passing  recognition  of  communal 
conditions,  but  with  sufficient  vagueness,  that  it  voices  popu- 
lar song,  then,  indeed,  one  feels  the  vanity  of  dogmatizing  to 
the  fuU.^  The  need  of  comparative,  historical,  and  genetic 
study  is  also  evident  in  a  similar  essay  on  the  refrain  in 
Middle  High  German.  Freericks^  regards  the  original 
refrain  not  as  repetition  of  the  words  of  a  singer  but  as  an 
expression  of  sentiment  which  they  evoke,  coming  back  in 
cries  of  sorrow  or  of  joy,  "When  utterances  of  this  sort 
continually  interrupt  the  song,  there  is  the  refrain  in  its  sim- 
plest form."  So  too  Minor,^  in  his  book  on  German  metres, 
calls  the  refrain  "the  original  cry  of  the  throng  in  answer  to 
the  song  of  the  singer."  Against  all  this,  Dr.  R.  M.  Meyer, 
in  two  essays,*  makes  emphatic  and  successful  protest.  With 
an  eye  on  conditions  and  not  on  theory,  Meyer  shows  the 
refrain  to  belong  to  the  oldest  poetry  of  man,  —  inarticulate 
cries  at  first,  in  rhythmic  sequence,  to  express  fear,  wonder, 
grief,  affection.  The  refrain,  for  example,  is  the  original 
part  of  a  threnody,  as  we  have  seen  very  plainly  in  our  study 
of  the  vocero ;  in  short,  so  far  from  being  an  aftergrowth  of 
communal  song,  this  refrain  is  declared  by  Dr.  Meyer  to  be 
the  very  root  of  the  matter.     With  more  attention  to  choral 

^  J.  Darmesteter,  Chants  Pop.  des  Afghans,  Paris,  1888-1890,  p.  cxcvi,  calls  the 
strophe  "abstraction  faite  du  refrain," — a  more  excellent  way  than  these  theo- 
rists take  with  their  "  little  poem  stuck  in  the  cracks  of  a  big  poem,"  and  such 
clever  nonsense. 

^"Der  Kehrreim  in  der  mhd.  Dichtung,"yij/^r^53^r.  a'.  K'dnigl.  Gymnas.  zu 
Fader  born,  1890. 

3  Neuhochdeutsche  Metrik,  p.  392.     See  R.  M.  Meyer,  below. 

*  Zeitschr.  f.  vergleich.  Lit.,  I.  34  ff.;  Euphorion,  Zeitschr.  f.  Litter aturgesch., 
V.  (1898),  I  ff.  He  points  out  that  nobody  heeded  his  view  of  the  case,  but  that 
the  works  of  Grosse,  Groos,  and  Bucher  all  brought  confirmation  to  it. 


26o 


THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 


song  in  the  horde  or  clan,  Posnett  has  come  closer  to  the 
facts  than  Meyer,  who  failed  to  appreciate  all  the  communal 
conditions  of  such  early  verse ;  for  while  Meyer  referred  to 
inarticulate  cries  as  a  beginning  of  the  refrain,  it  is  evident 
that  these  immediately  formed  the  chorus,  and  that  the 
refrain  is  rather  survival  and  deputy  of  this  old  chorus  than 
the  chorus  outright.  The  refrain,  in  other  words,  allows  one 
to  feel  one's  way  back  to  the  choral  song  of  the  horde,^  but  is 
not  to  be  transferred  to  those  primitive  times  even  in  its 
unintelligible  and  inarticulate  forms.  To  make  this  clear,  we 
must  study  the  refrain  in  its  various  communal  survivals. 

Records  of  early  literature  and  early  religion  show  the 
refrain  in  its  original  guise  as  a  part  of  the  choral  song,  and 
it  echoes  audibly  the  steps  of  the  dance.  Nowhere  is  this 
echo  more  insistent  than  in  that  hymn  of  the  Arval  brothers, 
sung,  of  course,  with  a  dance  that  was  confined  to  the  priests, 
and  already  come  a  long  way  from  the  shouting  and  leap- 
ing throng  of  primitive  time;  nevertheless,  as  a  hymn  used 
in  processions  about  the  fields,  it  is  to  be  connected  with  the 
survivals  of  similar  rites  and  the  songs  still  heard  from  Euro- 
pean peasants  at  the  harvest-home.  In  the  inscription  which 
preserves  it,  each  verse,  except  the  last,  is  given  thrice.^  A 
free  translation  ^  follows  :  — 

Help  us,  O  Lares,  help  us,  Lares,  help  us  ! 
And  thou,  O  Marmar,  suffer  not 
Fell  plague  and  ruin's  rot 
Our  folk  to  devastate. 


^  All  early  accounts  of  dances  among  savages,  South  Sea  islanders,  and  the 
like,  assert  this  priority  of  chorus  over  refrain.  There  are  no  spectators,  no 
audience,  or  "  public  ";  all  sing  and  all  dance.  See  Wallaschek  in  his  first 
chapter,  and  Yrjo  Hirn,  Forstudier  till  en  Kouslfilosofi,  Helsingfors,  1896,  p.  148. 

'^  Zell,  r'erienschrijien,  II.  Ill  f.,  notes  that  this  sort  of  repetition  is  found  in 
old  Etruscan  prayers  as  well  as  in  the  liturgy  of  the  Roman  church. 

8  By  Wordsworth,  work  quoted;  see,  too,  F.  D.  Allen,  Remnants  of  Early 
Latin,  p.  74,  with  interesting  remarks  on  the  fragments  of  the  Carfnina  Saliaria, 
the  axanienta. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        26 1 

Be  satiate,  O  fierce  Mars,  be  satiate ! 

Leap  o'er  the  threshold  !     Halt !  now  beat  the  ground  ! 
Be  satiate,  O  fierce  Mars,  be  satiate  ! 

Leap  o'er  the  threshold  !     Halt !  now  beat  the  ground  ! 
Be  satiate,  O  fierce  xMars,  be  satiate! 

Leap  o'er  the  threshold  !     Halt !  now  beat  the  ground ! 
Call  to  your  aid  the  heroes  all,  call  in  alternate  strain ; 

Call,  call  the  heroes  all. 
Call  to  your  aid  the  heroes  all,  call  in  alternate  strain. 
Help  us,  O  Marmar,  help  us,  Marmar,  help  us  ! 
Bound  high  in  solemn  measure,  bound  and  bound  again, 

Bound  high  and  bound  again  !  ^ 

Refrain  and  iteration  are  here  in  thrall  to  religious  cere- 
mony, and  the  priest  has  laid  hands  upon  the  rough  material 
of  the  throng ;  but  the  throng  is  present,  takes  part,  —  even 
if,  in  later  time,  by  deputies,  —  and  invention  is  at  a  mini- 
mum, appearing  only  in  its  regulative,  and  not  in  its  originat- 
ing force.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  question  and  answer,  strophe 
and  antistrophe,  are  simply  a  development  and  division  out 
of  the  crowd  with  one  voice,  as  in  the  Greek  chorus.  So, 
too,  in  an  Assyrian  hymn  :  ^  — 

Who  is  sublime  in  the  skies? 

Thou  alone,  thou  art  sublime. 
'Who  is  sublime  upon  earth? 

Thou  alone,  thou  art  sublime. 

The  Hebrew  psalms-^  show  very  clearly  a  more  or  less  artistic 
use  of  the  refrain  sung  under  congregational  and  therefore 

^  Kogel,  Gesch.  d.  d.  Lit.,  I.  31,  34  f.,  points  out  the  close  resemblance  of  the 
conditions  and  circumstances  of  this  hymn  with  those  of  the  old  German  hymns, 
of  which  we  have  no  example;  he  therefore  infers  for  the  latter  the  same  repeated 
cries  to  the  god,  and  finds  confirmation  for  this  inference  in  the  dancing,  the 
repetitions  and  the  cries  of  a  Gothic  Christmas  play,  written  in  Latin,  in  Greek 
characters,  but  with  a  Gothic  original  peeping  through.  Miiller's  attempt  to 
restore  this  Latin-Gothic  hymn  is  highly  interesting. 

2  Westphal,  AUgem.  Metrik,  p.  37. 

8  Also  dramatic  poetry,  as  in  Job;  for  example,  the  refrain  in  the  speeches 
of  the  messengers  who  tell  Job  of  his  calamity,  "And  I  only  am  escaped  alone 
to  tell  thee."     See  Moulton's  arrangement  in  his  edition  of  Job,  pp.  10  f. 


262  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF    POETRY 

to  some  extent  communal  conditions.^  These  communal 
conditions  can  be  guessed  in  their  older  and  simpler  form 
from  such  an  account  as  is  given  of  David  and  his  dancing 
before  the  ark,  when  he  "  and  all  the  house  of  Israel  brought 
up  the  ark  of  the  Lord  with  shouting  and  with  the  sound  of 
the  trumpet "  ;  ^  the  personal  song  detached  itself  from  the 
rhythmic  shouts  of  the  dancing  or  marching  multitude  pre- 
cisely as  the  song  of  the  wife  and  sister  over  their  dead  came 
out  clearer  and  clearer  from  the  wailings  of  the  clan.  So,  if 
D.  H.  Miiller  be  right,  following  in  the  path  marked  by 
Lowth,  the  form  of  Hebrew  prophecy  was  at  first  choral, 
then  was  divided  into  strophe  and  antistrophe,  yielding  in 
time  to  an  impassioned  solo  of  the  prophet  himself.  In  any 
case,  this  single  prophet,  in  historical  perspective,  lapses  into 
the  throng,  into  those  "  prophetic  hordes"  which  Budde  com- 
pares with  modern  Dervishes,  "  raving  bands  "  now  forgotten 
or  dimly  seen  in  the  background  of  a  stage  where  noble  indi- 
viduals like  Amos,  still  in  close  touch  with  the  people,  play 
the  chief  part,  and  hold  the  conspicuous  place.^  As  Amos 
and  his  brother  prophets  yield  to  the  later  guild  whose  prophe- 
cies were  written,  so  one  goes  behind  Amos  to  the  "bands," 
to  communal  prophecy,  to  the  repeated  shouts  and  choral 
exhortation,  and  so  to  the  festal  horde  of  all  early  religious 
rites.     The  backward  course  would  be  from  a  prophecy  writ- 

^  For  these  refrains  see  Driver,  Tntrod.  to  the  Lit.  of  the  Old  Test.,  p.  366 
(original  ed.,  p.  344).  They  are  sometimes  exactly  repeated,  sometimes  varied. 
For  the  poetry  due  to  the  Ilebrev/s  in  general,  see  Rcnan,  Melanges,  p.  12. 

2  2  Sam.  vi,  14  f. 

2  Lowth,  de  sacra  Poesi  Hehr.,  ed.  Rosenmiiller,  p.  205,  citing  "  Nehem.  xii,  24, 
31,  38,  40,  et  titulum  I's.  Ixxxviii."  D.  H.  Miiller,  Die  Propheten  in  ihrer  urs- 
prihiglichen  Form,  Vienna,  1896,  I.  246  f.,  —  a  somewhat  discredited  work  with 
regard  to  the  theory  of  Hellenic  and  Hebrew  relations,  but  seemingly  sound  in 
these  facts.  Budde,  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  F.xile,  pp.97,  lOO.  The  "  prophets  " 
who  came  to  England  from  the  Cevennes  make  another  modern  instance;  and 
there  are  many  more  in  the  great  development  of  religious  enthusiasm  in  the 
seventeenth  century. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        263 

ten  to  be  read,  to  the  chanted  blessing  or  imprecation  of  the 
seer;  thence  to  a  singing  and  shouting  band  under  the  leader- 
ship of  one  man,  with  constant  refrain ;  and  at  last  to  the 
shouting  and  dancing  of  purely  communal  excitement,  the 
real  chorus.  Moses  and  the  children  of  Israel  "  sang  a  song 
unto  the  Lord,  saying,  I^  will  sing  unto  the  Lord.  .  .  .  And 
Miriam  the  prophetess  .  .  .  took  a  timbrel  in  her  hand,  and 
all  the  women  went  out  after  her  with  timbrels  and  with 
dances.  And  Miriam  answered  them,  Sing  ye  to  the  Lord." 
Here  is  certainly  no  premeditated  verse ;  and  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  refrains,  except  where  they  have  a 
sacred  tradition  behind  them  and  are  kept  up  by  the  priests, 
as  in  the  Arval  "  minutes,"  easily  drop  from  the  record.  Oral 
tradition,  on  the  other  hand,  is  fain  to  hold  fast  to  all  these 
vain  repetitions ;  they  are  the  salt  of  the  thing.  Now  and 
then  an  unmistakable  refrain  is  preserved.  "  And  it  came  to 
pass  as  they  came,  when  David  returned  from  the  slaughter 
of  the  PhiUstines,  that  the  women  came  out  of  all  the  cities 
of  Israel,  singing  and  dancing,  to  meet  King  Saul,  with  tim- 
brels, with  joy,  and  with  instruments  of  music.  And  the 
women  sang  one  to  another  in  tJicir play,  and  said  :  — 

"  Saul  hath  slain  his  thousands, 
And  David  his  tens  of  thousands."^ 

That  women  in  all  nations  and  at  certain  stages  of  culture 
make  songs  of  triumph  like  this,  as  they  dance  and  sing, 
is  known  to  the  most  careless  reader  ;  one  or  two  chorals, 

1  Exod.  XV.  I.  20  f.     Clearly  the  whole  tribe  :  see  above,  p.  186. 

2  I  Sam.,  xviii.  i  ff.  Lowth  says  of  the  ojte  to  another :  "hoc  est,  alternis 
choris  carmen  amoebaeum  canebant ;  alteris  enim  praecinentibus  'Percussit  Saulus 
millia  sua,'  alterae  subjiciebant  '  et  David  suas  myriadas.'  "  Perhaps.  Amant 
alterna  Camencs.  But  it  was  rude  amcebean,  then,  a  tumultuous  chorus,  just  as 
in  the  Fescennine  songs  of  old  Italy,  and  in  the  songs  of  Roman  soldiers,  a 
roughly  divided  pair  of  choruses  sang  alternately :  see  Zell,  Ferienschriften,  II. 
149.  On  the  choral  nature  of  old  Hebrew  poetry  see  this  whole  passage  in  Lowth, 
pp.  205  f. 


264  THE   BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

strangely  similar  to  these  songs  of  the  Hebrew  women, 
may  be  noted  from  mediaeval  Europe.  Now  it  is  the  singing 
of  Gothic  songs  of  welcome  by  those  maidens  who  come 
from  their  village,  as  the  women  of  Israel  from  their  cities, 
to  meet  and  greet  Attila,^  dancing  as  they  sing.  So  the 
daughter  of  Jephtha  greeted  her  sire  with  the  singing  and 
dancing  maidens ;  and  so  in  Cashmere  a  stranger  is  still 
met  by  the  women  and  girls  of  a  village,  who  form  a  half 
circle  at  the  first  house  where  he  comes,  join  their  arms, 
and  sing  eulogies  of  him,  dancing  to  the  tune  of  the  verse. 
Malays  and  even  Africans  do  the  same.^  Again,  it  is  in 
the  seventh  century,  and  an  obscure  saint.  Faro  by  name, 
has  won  the  gratitude  of  a  community ;  straightway  a  song 
is  made  and  sung  "  by  the  women  as  they  dance  and  clap 
their  hands."  ^  It  was  not  often  that  a  saint's  name  lent  grace 
to  these  songs  of  the  women  and  saved  them  from  clerical 
wrath  ;  the  decrees  of  councils,  the  letters  of  bishops,  refer 

^  In  the  year  446.     The  story  is  often  quoted  from  Priscus,  188,  189. 

2  Bockel,  work  quoted,  p.  cviii. 

^  "  Ex  qua  victoria  carmen  publicum  juxta  rusticitatem  per  omnium  ora  ita 
canentium,  feminaeque  choros  inde  plaudendo  componebant."  Mabillon,  Ada 
Sanctorum  ordinis  S.  Betiedicti,  Venetis,  1733,  II.  590.  This  clapping  of  hands 
as  one  dances  and  sings  is  often  found  in  communal  records,  and  is  common 
among  savages,  negroes,  and  the  like.  Among  tribes  on  the  White  Nile,  where 
no  musical  instruments  were  to  be  had,  girls  clapped  their  hands  to  the  song  and 
dance :  Wallaschek,  p.  87,  and  also  cf.  p.  102,  the  account  of  women  seen  by 
Captain  Cook  to  snap  their  fmgers  in  marking  time  for  their  song.  The  practice 
is  common  elsewhere  ;  for  Polynesia  generally,  see  Waitz-Gerland,  AtithropoL, 
VI.  78  f.     Sidonius  Apollinaris  speaks  of  it,  I.  9 :  — 

Castalidumque  choros  vario  modulamine  plausit 
Carminibus,  cannis,  pollice,  voce,  pede; 

while  a  dance  to  this  hand-clapping  is  represented  on  an  Assyrian  monument : 
see  Ilerrig's  Archiv,  XXIV.  168,  quoted  l)y  IWckel  in  the  introduction  to  his 
Hessian  ballads. — 'I'hat  actual  songs  were  made  by  these  women  is  clear;  see 
the  passage  from  Guillaume  de  Dole,  quoted  by  Jeanroy,  Origines,  p.  309 :  — 

que  firent  puceles  de  France 

a  I'ormel  devant  Tremilli 

on  Ten  a  maint  bon  plet  basti. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        265 

perpetually  to  the  wicked  verses  and  diabolical  dances  in 
which  maids  and  even  matrons  indulged  at  the  very  doors 
of  the  church.  Sometimes,  however,  national  glory  covered 
the  shame.  In  the  chronicle  of  Fabyan,^  who  is  here  telling 
no  lies,  it  is  said  that  after  Bannockburn  songs  were  made 
and  sung  with  a  refrain  "  in  daunces,  in  the  carols  of  the 
maidens  and  minstrels  of  Scotland,  to  the  reproofe  and 
disdaine  of  Englishmen  "  ;  and  Barbour,^  mentioning  a  fight 
in  Eskdale  where  fifty  Scots  defeated  three  hundred  English 
under  Sir  Andrew  Harcla,  says  he  will  not  go  into  details, 
seeing  that  any  one  who  likes  may  hear  — 

Young  wemen,  quhen  thai  will  play, 
Syng  it  emang  thame  ilke  day. 

One  is  even  fain   to  believe  that    Layamon  ^  was    thinking 
of  the  women  when  he  said  that  after  a  treaty  of  peace, 
Tha  weoren  in  thissen  lande  blisfulle  songes. 

That  the  record  of  these  refrains  is  so  meagre  and 
baffling  need  cause  no  surprise.  The  histories  of  national 
literature  are  disappointing  to  the  student  of  beginnings,  for 
the  reason  that  they  almost  invariably  "^  study  these  beginnings 
as  conditioned  by  the  habits  of  authorship  in  modern  times ; 
they  are  always  looking  for  original  composition,  for  expres- 

^  London,  181 1,  p.  420.     See  also  Ritson,  Scottish  Song,  I.  xxvi,  f. 
Maydens  of  Englande,  sore  may  you  mourne 
For  your  lemmans  ye  have  lost  at  Bannockisburne ! 

With  heve  a  lowe. 
WTiat,  weeneth  the  King  of  England 
So  soone  to  have  won  Scotland  ! 

With  rumbylowe. 

This  refrain,  as  will  be  seen,  is  a  kind  of  water-chorus. 

2  Bruce,  ed.  Skeat,  E,  E.  T.  S.,  p.  399. 

3  Brut,  ed.  Madden,  9538  f. 

*  A  notable  exception  is  K.  O.  Miiller,  who  studied  early  Greek  song  in  con- 
nection with  early  Greek  life,  an  example  —  as  Posnett  notes  in  some  excellent 
remarks,  Compar.Lit.,^.  104  —  which  subsequent  historians  have  neglected  to 
their  own  harm. 


266  THE   BEGINNINGS  OF   POETRY 

sion  of  individual  feeling,  for  a  story,  and  therefore  turn 
aside  from  these  stretched  metres  of  an  antique  song.  But 
the  story,  and  the  expression  of  personal  emotion,  are  precisely 
what  one  seldom  if  ever  finds  at  the  beginning  of  a  literature ; 
one  finds  there,  when  one  finds  anything,  the  chorus  or  its 
deputy  the  refrain.  The  refrain  was  a  constant  element 
in  early  Greek  song,  "  an  essential  mint-mark  "  ;  ^  not  only 
the  early  melic  verse,  but  a  study  of  the  chorus  ^  in  dramatic 
survival,  proves  this  beyond  doubt,  and  one  is  amazed  to 
find  Rosieres,  in  the  essay  quoted  above,  saying  that  the 
ancients,  particularly  the  Greeks,  had  no  need  of  the  refrain, 
and  hardly  used  it  at  all.  How  important,  on  the  contrary, 
this  refrain  must  have  been,  how  it  works  back  through  the 
alternate  strains  of  chorus  and  solo  to  the  throng  of  com- 
munal singers  and  dancers,  could  be  shown  for  classical 
poetry,  and  can  be  proved  by  mediaeval  and  modern  refrains, 
some  already  noted  under  the  vocero,  and  others  presently 
to  be  considered  in  songs  of  labour  and  of  the  harvest.  True, 
the  records  are  scanty ;  and  the  unwary  historian  of  English 
poetry  in  the  early  stage,  reviewing  his  material,  announces 
that,  with  the  exception  of  some  insignificant  charms,  there 
is  just  one  poem  with  a  refrain,  the  "  Consolation "  of 
Deor,  the  king's  minstrel  out  of  place,  —  taking,  that  is, 
a  lyric  of  indi\ddual  and  artistic  reflection  as  the  only  ex- 
ample of  that  part  of  poetry  which  above  all  belongs  to  the 
communal  and  spontaneous  expression  of  the  throng.  Re- 
corded poetry  has  here  a  poor  tale  to  tell,  and  even  that  is 
usually  marred  in  the  telling.  Where,  then,  is  the  old  refrain 
of  the  English  folk,  and  where  was  the  chorus .-'  Had  they 
no  dances,  no  ballads,  no  communal  singing }  If  the  evi- 
dence of  ethnology  from  tribes  and  communities  of  men  in 

^  Smythe,  Melic  Poets,  p.  490. 

2  For  reference  to  the  older  literature  of  this  subject,  see  Blankenburg,  Litterar. 
Zus'dtze,  I.  235  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        267 

every  degree  of  culture  is  to  be  accepted,  it  is  certain  that 
Englishmen  of  that  early  day  had  dance,  ballad,  chorus,  and 
refrain.  We  know  that  their  old  heathen  hymns  went 
with  the  dance;  and  the  dance  means  a  strophic  arrange- 
ment. What,  then,  has  become  of  this  refrain .''  So  far  as 
the  old  English  poetry  has  found  record  at  the  hands  of  the 
monk,  it  is  in  a  fixed  alliterative  metre,  without  strophes,^ 
suited  to  epic  and  narrative  purposes,  suited  to  recitation  and 
a  sort  of  chant,  but  not,  in  its  literary  shape,  suited  to 
refrain  and  chorus.^  One  does  not  dance  an  epic,  or  sing 
it;  it  is  chanted  or  recited;  and  even  Anglo-Saxon  lyric, 
barring  that  little  song  of  Deor,  is  elegiac  and  highly  re- 
flective. The  refrain,  says  Dr.  R.  M.  Meyer,'^  is  to  be 
assumed  for  oldest  Germanic  poetry,  although  it  was  thrown 
out  by  the  recited  alliterative  verse,  only  to  come  again  into 
recorded  literature  with  the  introduction  of  rime  ;  but  no  one 
supposes  that  Englishmen  ceased  in  that  interval  to  dance 
and  sing.  It  is  a  defect  of  the  record.  The  chorals  and 
refrains,  even  the  ballads  of  which  WilHam  of  Malmesbury 
speaks  as  crumbling  to  pieces  with  the  lapse  of  time,  were 
simply  deemed  useless  if  not  harmful,  and  had  no  claim 
whatever  to  the  life  beyond  life.  Nor  is  this  chorus,  this 
refrain,  simply  assumed  for  oldest  Germanic  poetry ;  it  is 
proved,  and  nowhere  proved  so  well  as  in  Miillenhoff's 
essay.*  Many  conclusions  of  this  sturdy  and  often  too  in- 
tolerant scholar  have  been  rejected   by  later   investigation; 

1  Deor's  song,  of  course,  is  divided  into  strophes  or  stanzas  by  means  of  this 
refrain. 

-  See  above,  p.  86,  on  the  dispute  between  Sievers  and  Moller,  and  their 
agreement  regarding  this  change  from  song  to  recitation. 

8  Aligerm.  Poesie,  pp.  34 1,  345. 

*  De  Antiquissima  Germanorum  Poesi  Chorica  .  .  .  Kiel,  1847.  "  Antiquis- 
simum  enim  omnium  poesis  genus  haud  dubie  illud  est,  quod  choricum  dicitur." 
See  p.  5 :  "  Carmina  vero  haec  sacra  ...  ex  communi  populorum  usu,  non  a 
rhapsodis  recitata  neque  a  singulis,  sed  semper  a  choro  sive  pluribus  sivntl  et 
cantata  et  acta  sunt." 


268  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

but  his  assertion  in  regard  to  choral  poetry  as  the  foundation 
of  every  literature  remains  an  article  of  faith  among  those 
who  deal  at  first  hand  with  the  material  involved,  and  writers 
since  his  day  who  have  undertaken  to  describe  the  different 
kinds  of  Germanic  choral  song  have  done  little  more  than 
follow  in  his  steps. ^  There  is  no  need,  then,  to  rehearse  this 
proof  of  the  existence  of  refrain  and  chorus  as  main  form  ^ 
of  poetry  among  the  ancient  Germans ;  it  is  in  order  simply 
to  trace  these  and  other  choral  songs  in  the  later  fragments 
and  the  surviving  refrains,  whether  sung  at  the  solemn 
procession  round  the  fields,  or  sung  to  the  festal  dance  at  har- 
vest-home, or  in  whatever  survivals  they  may  be  found,  and 
to  compare  them  with  kindred  refrains  and  kindred  customs 
elsewhere.  From  this  point  of  view,  even  the  blackness 
of  thick  darkness  which  broods  over  Anglo-Saxon  com- 
munal song,  that  darkness  of  superstitious  fear  felt  by 
monks  who  knew  these  customs  and  these  songs  to  be  of 
the  devil  himself,  and  would  not  write  them  down,  is  lifted 
a  little.  We  look,  then,  at  refrains  of  labour,  refrains  of 
actual  work,  too  trivial  usually  for  record,  and  at  those  re- 
frains and  chorals  of  the  harvest  feasts,  of  plantings,  sowings, 
reapings,  which  had  the  taint  of  heathendom  upon  them,  and 
so  were  either  left  in  silence  or  coaxed  into  a  harmless  for- 
mula; we  look,  too,  at  refrains  and  chorus  of  the  dance,  the 
sunnier  side  of  life,  and  still  more  provocative  than  labour  as 
an  occasion  of  communal  song.  For  the  refrains  of  war,  and 
even  for  the  choral  raised  by  a  whole  army  as  it  marched 

^  The  best  recent  summary  is  that  of  Kogel  in  the  first  volume  of  his  Geschichte 
der  deuischen  Litteralu7-. 

2  See  p.  6  of  Miillcnhoff:  "Actionum  autem  choricarum  triplex  est  genus: 
pompa,  saltatio,  ludus;  quorum  et  simplicissimum  est  pompa  et  quasi  primitivum." 
He  treats  only  the  first  of  these  three;  but  a  valuable  paper  on  the  sword-dance 
("  Ueber  den  Schwerttanz,"  in  the  Festgabe  fur  G.  Homeyer,  1871),  the  essay  De 
Carmine  Wessofontano,  and  many  hints  in  his  introduction  to  the  Sagen,  Mar- 
chen  u.  Lieder  d.  Ilerzogth.  Schleswig-Hohtein  u.  Lauenburg,  1845,  make  up  the 
omission. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        269 

to  battle,  an  occasion  which  Mlillenhoff  calls  the  supreme 
moment  of  all  Germanic  life,  the  fierce  and  clamorous  words 
needing  no  leader,^  and  the  wild  rhythm  asking  no  aid  from 
trumpet  or  drum,  there  is  ample  evidence  ;  and  indeed  these 
war  chorals  might  be  connected  by  easy  stages  with  the 
ridiculous  marching  songs  already  noted  above.  From  the 
barditiis  to  "  ma  poule  a  fait  un  poulet  "  were  a  pretty  jour- 
ney ;  but  we  will  keep  to  the  ways  of  peace,  and  the  saiire 
wocJien,  frohe  feste  of  everyday  life  will  yield  material 
enough  in  regard  to  this  communal  refrain. 

Songs  of  labour  are  found  everywhere  ;  but  there  is  a  great 
chasm  between  the  actual  refrains,  the  survivals  of  communal 
or  even  solitary  song  which  come  from  the  real  scene  of 
labour  and  from  the  real  labourers,  and  those  songs  which 
are  made  for  the  labourer.  Nowhere  is  the  difference  between 
volkspocsie  and  volkstJiiimliche  foesie  so  evident ;  and  we  have 
here  no  concern  with  poetry,  however  successful,  which  has 
been  written  for  the  edification  of  "honest  toil."^  It  is  the 
song  of  actual  labour  to  which  we  now  turn,  as  it  has  abounded 
in  all  the  activities  of  life,  and  which,  like  the  ballad,  is  fast 
vanishing  from  the  scene.  Sometimes  the  labour  was  solitary, 
and  the  song  was  a  plaintive  little  lyric  when  it  was  made  by 
the  lonely  maiden  grinding  at  her  hand-mill : 

Alone  I  ground,  alone  I  sang, 
Alone  1  turned  the  mill.  .  .  .  ^ 


1  Kogel,  work  quoted,  p.  i8.  See  his  references,  p.  17,  for  these  refrains  and 
songs  of  war. 

2  Well  meant  but  ludicrous  compilations,  designed  to  offer  songs  of  solace  and 
cheer  to  all  sorts  of  labourers,  and  to  drive  out  the  idle  rimes  which  they  are 
wont  to  sing,  are  cleverly  noted  in  Hoffmann  von  Fallersleben's  Unsere  Volksthum- 
lichen  Lieder,  Leipzig,  3d  ed.,  1869;  the  specimens  he  gives  in  his  introduction 
are  highly  amusing,  and  are  taken  from  Becker's  Alildheimisches  Lieder-Buch, 
1799,  which  provides  special  songs  for  the  butcher,  the  chimney-sweep,  the 
scissors-grinder,  and  all  the  rest.     See  Hoffmann,  pp.  vii  ff. 

^  A  Lithuanian  mill-song :  see  Biicher,  p.  39.     See  also  Porthan,  work  quoted 


270  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

but  often  even  this  grinding  of  the  mill  was  social,  as  in 
Poland,  where  it  was  the  manner  of  the  women  to  repeat 
a  word  in  chorus.^  Plutarch  has  preserved  an  old  Greek 
"song  of  the  millstone,"  ^  which  he  heard  a  woman  sing; 
from  the  older  Scandinavian  literature^  comes  a  lay,  sung  by- 
two  maidens,  Menja  and  Fenja,  as  they  grind  out  King  Frodi's 
fortune,  which  may  hold  bits  of  the  actual  refrain  of  labour, 
and  has,  too,  its  touch  of  folklore,  explaining  "  how  the  sea 
became  salt "  ;  but  the  real  and  primitive  choral  of  such 
labour  is  sufficiently  attested  by  those  women  in  Poland,  and 
by  a  similar  case  among  the  Basuto  tribe,*  where,  as  Cassilis 
says,  to  relieve  the  fatigue  of  solitary  grinding,  "  the  women 
come  together  and  grind  in  unison,  by  singing  an  air  which 
blends  perfectly  with  the  cadenced  clinking  of  the  rings  upon 
their  arms."  There  is  plenty  of  evidence  for  this  choral  of 
the  grinding  women  in  places  and  times  so  widely  sundered  as 
to  forbid  all  idea  of  borrowing,  and  to  leave  the  conditions  of 
communal  labour  and  communal  consent  as  the  only  explana- 

above,  p.  198.  He  gives  a  pretty  little  song  of  a  Finnish  woman  who  calls  for  her 
absent  husband  in  no  recondite  terms,  ending:  — 

Liki,  liki,  linduiseni, 
Kuki,  kuki,  kuldaiseni !  — 

that  is,  "prope,  prope,  deliciae  meae;   juxta,  juxta,  corculum  meum." 

^  "  Agrestum  quendam  concentum  edere  solent  .  .  .  hocque  verbum  ad  canti- 
lenae  similitudinem  repetunt."  Pistorius,  Polon.  Hist.  Corp.,  I.  46,  quoted  by 
Bezzenberger,  Zeilsch.  f.  vgl.  Lit.,  N.  F.,  I.  269. 

2  Sniythe,  Greek  Melic  Poets,  pp.  160,  510  f.  —  Biicher,  p.  38,  notes  that  this 
song,  like  many  a  lost  refrain  of  the  same  kind,  disregards  the  rules  of  classical 
metre,  and  follows  the  movement  of  the  millstone. —  Pennant  {Second  Tour  in 
Scotland^,  Pinkerton,  III.  314,  compares  the  singing  at  the  mill  of  the  island 
women  with  Aristophanes'  Clouds,  Act  V.  scene  il. 

3  Pros.  Edda,  ed.  Wilken,  "  Skaldskaparmal,"  xliii.  pp.  123-134;   cf,  4:  — 

sungu  ok  slungu 
snd'Sga  steini  .  .  . 

*  Bockel,  work  quoted,  Ixiii  f.,  where  there  are  other  references  of  the  sort. 
So  in  pounding  wheat,  women  in  North  Africa  sang  a  national  song  in  chorus,  al- 
ways pounding  in  time  with  the  music,  Wallaschek,  p.  220. 


THE    DIFFERENCING    COMMUNAL    ELEMENTS         27 1 

tion.  Originally  there  was  a  spontaneous  chorus  or  refrain  ^ 
—  in  the  strictly  choral  sense,  that  is,  and  not  in  the  technical 
meaning  presently  to  be  considered  —  suggested  by  the  move- 
ments, cadence,  and  sounds  of  the  work  itself ;  improvisation 
added  words  at  will,  until  at  last  art  seized  upon  the  material 
and  gave  now  a  song  like  that  of  Fenja  and  Menja,  now 
even  a  jolly  refrain  such  as  one  finds  in  an  audacious  song 
of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  Maid  of  the  Mill.  ^  Every- 
where labour  had  its  refrain  and  song,  and  even  the  scanty 
remains  of  Hellenic  communal  poetry  tell  of  songs  for  reaper, 
thresher,  miller,  for  the  vintage,  spinning,  weaving,  for  the 
drawers  of  water,  oarsmen,  rope-makers,  watchmen,  shep- 
herds, and  for  the  common  labourers  marching  out  to  their 
work.  Rome  itself,  in  the  old  silent  period,  has  something 
of  this  song  for  the  attentive  ear ;  ^  and  allusions  scattered 
throughout  the  Bible  show  that  the  Hebrews  sang  at  their 
work  in  house  and  in  field.  A  few  echoes  of  such  singing 
come  from  Egypt ;  while  darker  and  darkest  Africa,  along 
with  savage  tribes  over  the  world,  shows  yet  more  elementary, 
and  hence  more  insistent  and  necessary*  connection  between 
work  and  song.  With  the  breaking  up  of  communal  condi- 
tions, with  the  advance  of  individual  and  initiative  art,  these 
songs  of  labour,  like  the  ballad,  like  all  communal  poetry, 
tend  to  disappear  or  yield  to  aUen  verse.  Often  the  indi- 
vidual works  in  silence,  when  his  labour  demands  intelligent 
thought,  but  where  labour  is  automatic  or  monotonous,  where- 

^  Biicher,  p.  60,  is  emphatic  on  this  point,  that  the  refrain  is  to  be  regarded  as 
the  oldest  part  of  all  songs  of  labour. 

2  Act  V. 

'  Zell,  Ferienschriften,  II.  99  ff.,  "  Ueber  die  Volkslieder  der  alten  Romer," 
is  still  the  best  piece  of  information  on  the  subject,  although  it  was  published  in 
1829. 

*  In  carrying  loads,  in  cutting,  and  the  like  tasks,  the  Lhoosai  in  southeast 
India  "  clear  the  lungs  with  a  continuous  han  !  hau  !  tittered  in  measured  time  by 
all ;  without  making  this  sound  they  say  they  would  be  unable  to  work."  Lewin 
quoted  by  Bockel,  p.  be. 


272  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

ever  it  is  collective,  the  labourer  sings,  and  always  will  do  so ; 
the  important  fact  is  that  he  now  ceases  to  sing  the  old  refrain 
or  song  of  the  labour  itself,  born,  as  Bucher^  shows  so 
plainly,  of  the  very  movements  and  sounds  which  it  called 
forth.  For  good  reason,  andej'e  zeiten,  andere  lieder.  Neus^ 
noted  that  the  Esthonians,  a  century  ago,  sang  their  own 
songs,  and  sang  always  as  they  worked  in  the  fields  or  came 
together  for  festal  occasions  ;  now,  —  and  "  now  "  is  fifty  years 
ago  —  he  says  that  either  the  song  is  silent,  or  else  it  is 
changed  for  an  imported  German  ditty.  All  the  more  need, 
then,  to  collect  and  study  such  survivals  of  the  refrains  of 
labour  as  can  be  found.  Speaking  of  the  decline  of  folk- 
song in  Germany,  not  only  of  the  making  but  even  of  the 
singing,  Professor  E.  H.  Meyer  ^  remarks  that  collective 
labour  still  has  some  power  here  and  there  to  stir  the  old 
instinct  into  a  fitful  activity.  Now  it  is  in  the  spinning-room, 
—  where  Bockel  *  a  few  years  ago  could  hear  Hessian  folk- 
songs in  the  making  —  now  at  the  berry-picking  in  Nassau, 
at  the  flax-breaking,  and  elsewhere  in  cases  where  companies 
of  peasants  still  ply  the  monotonous  tasks  of  their  fore- 
fathers. And  in  all  these  cases,  as  in  the  beginning,  so  in 
the  end,  women  are  the  mainstay  of  communal  song.^ 

Of  particular  trades  and  callings,  perhaps  sailors,  oarsmen, 
and  watermen  generally,  would  furnish  more  refrains  than 


^  Arbeit  u.  Rhythtnus,  pp.  30  ff.  This  chapter,  quoted  above,  pp.  107  flf.,  gives 
ample  references  for  the  subject. 

2  Ehstnische  Volksliedcr,  1850,  p.  I. 

'  Deutsche  Volkskunde,  1898,  jjp.  331  f. 

*  Work  quoted,  p.  cxxiii.  The  spinning-room  for  winter,  and  in  summer  the 
rundgdnge,  when  youths  and  maidens  arm  in  arm  go  by  long  rows  singing  songs 
to  their  march,  are  still  a  refuge  for  actual  poetry  of  the  people.  But,  as  he  says, 
it  is  dying  fast. 

^  Bockel,  work  (|uoted,  p.  clii,  notes  that  the  three  classes  who  spread  and  sing 
songs  of  tlie  folk  arc  women,  soldiers,  shepherds.  Blind  minstrels,  of  course,  are 
to  be  added  for  the  chanting  and  reciting  guild,  and  in  Russia  the  tailors.  But 
women,  soldiers,  and  shepherds  l^est  keep  the  old  clan  instincts. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        273 

could  be  found  in  any  one  industry  of  the  land.  Sailors'  chan- 
teys are  still  heard  in  every  ship  ;  ^  but  they  are  now  apt  to  echo 
those  songs  of  the  street  and  the  dance-hall  which  have  been 
picked  up  at  port,  and  they  have  seldom  a  traditional  interest. 
Here  and  there,  however,  the  genuine  refrain  is  clear  enough, 
and  attests  itself  by  its  power  to  withstand  the  discrimina  rertiin 
and  the  changes  of  time  ;  it  is  said  that  modern  Greek  sailors, 
when  reefing  sails,  have  nearly  the  same  melodious  calls  as 
those  preserved  in  a  play  of  Aristophanes.^  Negro  roust- 
abouts on  the  Mississippi  sing  interminable  refrains,  while  a 
capable  leader  improvises  stanzas  on  the  work  in  hand  or  on 
current  events ;  a  process  which  is  matched  by  refrains  and 
songs  of  manual  labour  in  every  part  of  the  world.  A  well- 
known  passage  in  the  Comp lay nt  of  Scotland"^  gives  the  cries 
and  songs  both  of  weighing  anchor, — where  a  leader  sings 
and  the  rest  answer  "as  it  had  bene  ecco  in  an  hou  heuch," 
like  the  echo  in  a  hollow  ravine,  mainly  in  repetitions,  —  and 
of  hoisting  sail,  with  iteration  of  short  running  phrases  such 

as  :  — 

Grit  and  smal,  grit  and  smal, 

Ane  and  al,  ane  and  al,  — 

and  not  stopping  here,  undertakes  to  set  down  the  "  chorus  " 
of  guns  heavy  and  light  as  a  spirited  sea-fight  begins.     In 

1  Laura  Alexandrine  Smith,  Music  of  the  Waters,  London,  1888;  John  Ashton, 
Real  Sailor  Songs,  London,  1891.  Boatmen's  songs  changing  or  dying  out: 
Biicher,  pp.  128  f.  Bvicher's  little  group  of  boatmen's  songs,  pp.  118  ff.,  66  ff.,  is 
far  more  valuable  than  these  long  and  random  collections.  See  his  comments, 
pp.  68  ff.  For  example,  the  boat-song  of  North  American  Indians,  taken  from 
Baker,  is  foolishness  to  the  Greeks  who  make  collections  for  popular  use,  but  is 
full  of  instruction  for  the  student  of  poetry;  it  runs,  without  the  musical  notes:  — 

Ah  yah,  ah  yah,  ah  ya  ya  ya, 
Ah  ya  ya  ya,  ah  ya  ya  ya, 
Ya  ya  ya  ya  ya  ya. 

-  Bockel,  p.  Ix.     Roman  oarsmen   had   not  only  the  celeusma  to  time  their 
strokes,  but  often  a  song  of  their  own  :  Zell,  II.  208. 
3  Ed.  Murray,  E.  E.  T.  S.,  pp.  40  ff. 


274  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  old  play  Common  Conditiojis  occurs  a  pirates'  song,  the 
stanzas  in  quatrains,  with  a  jolly  refrain  or  chorus :  — 

Lustely,  lustely,  lustely  let  us  saile  forthe, 

The  wind  trim  doth  serve  us,  it  blows  from  the  north. 

Hoisting,  pulling,  however,  and  work  of  the  sort  on  shipboard, 
yield  in  importance,  so  far  as  refrains  are  concerned,  to  the 
regular  cadence  of  the  oar,  where  voices  have  kept  tune  and 
oars  have  kept  time  from  earliest  days.  Not  only  in  the 
classical  period,  where  actual  song  and  music  came  to  take 
the  place  of  the  refrain,^  but  with  Egyptians,  Africans,  Tonga 
Islanders,  wherever  rowing  is  practised,  these  refrains  are 
known  ;  the  Maoris,  for  example,  "  row  in  time  with  a  melody 
which  is  sung  by  a  chorus  sitting  in  canoes."  The  same 
thing  is  told  of  the  Indians  of  Alaska.^  A  refrain  already 
noted  seems  to  have  served  in  England  both  for  hoisting  and 
for  rowing  ;  Skelton  mentions  it :  — 

Holde  up  the  helme,  loke  up,  and  lete  god  stere, 

I  wolde  be  mery,  what  wynde  that  ever  blowe, 

Heve  and  how,  rombelow,  row  the  bote,  Norman,  rowe ! 

and  D' Israeli  says  that  sailors  at  Newcastle  in  heaving  anchor 
still  have  their  Heave  and  ho,  rumbeloiv  ;  while  it  is  recorded 
that  in  1453,  Norman,  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  chose  to  row 
rather  than  ride  to  Westminster,  and  the  watermen  made 
this  roundel  or  song  :  — 

Rowe  the  bote,  Norman, 
Rowe  to  thy  Lemman,  —  ^ 

so  that  two  refrains  are  confused  in  the  laureate's  account, 
and  the  exquisite  reason,  with  a  Lord  Mayor  in  the  case,  is  no 

1  Bucher,  p.  68. 

2  Wallaschek,  pp.  41,  47.  See,  too,  p.  166:  "Mr.  Reade  observed  that  his 
people"  —  Africans  —  "always  began  to  sing  when  he  compelled  them  to  over- 
come their  natural  laziness  and  to  continue  rowing." 

'  Chappell,  Pop.  Music  Olden  Time,  pp.  482,  783;   Skelton,  Bowge  of  Court. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        275 

more  probable  than  such  stories  of  origins  are  wont  to  be. 
For  example,  Cnut  is  credited  ^  with  a  little  song,  which  he  is 
said  to  have  composed  as  he  rowed  by  Ely  and  heard  the  chant- 
ing of  the  monks  ;  "  ordering  the  rowers  to  pull  gently,  and 
calling  his  retinue  about  him,  he  asked  them  to  join  him  .  .  . 
in  singing  a  ballad  which  he  composed  in  English  and  which 
begins  in  this  way  :  — 

"Merie  sungen  the  muneches  binnen  Ely, 
Tha  Cnut  ching  rew  ther  by. 

"  Roweth,  cnihtes,  noer  the  land, 
And  here  we  thes  muneches  sang.*' 

Several  things  here  are  noteworthy ;  both  Grundtvig  and 
Rosenberg  have  pointed  out  ^  that  this  song  is  composed  in  a 
two-line  ballad  strophe  of  four  accents  to  the  verse,  the  kind 
afterward  so  common  in  Scandinavia  and  in  England ;  and 
whatever  Cnut's  share  in  the  making  of  it,  it  is  at  least  of  the 
eleventh  century,  and  is  the  first  recorded  piece  of  verse  to 
break  away  from  the  regular  stichic  metre  of  our  oldest 
poetry.  Moreover,  it  is  said  that  Cnut  improvised  the  song, 
and  that  he  called  on  the  others  to  join  him  ;  the  lines  quoted 
then,  so  Grundtvig  infers,  are  the  burden  or  chorus  of  the 
song  itself  ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  know  that  in  the  days 
of  the  chronicler,  say  about  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century, 
this  refrain  as  well  as  the  song  was  sung  in  the  choral  dances 
of  the  English  folk.  Doubtless  it  was  sung  to  the  oar  itself  ; 
and  that  may  have  been  the  first  of  it,  with  royalty  as  an 
afterthought.^ 

1  "  Cantilenam  his  verbis  Anglice  composuit;  "  see  Historia  Eliensis,  II.  27, 
in  Gale,  Hist.  Script.,  I.  505;  it  gives  the  account  here  quoted,  then  the  verses, 
adding  "  et  caetera,  quae  sequuntur,  quae  usque  hodie  in  charts  publice  can- 
taniur.'"  .  .   . 

2  Danmarks  Gamle  Folkeviser,  III.  x  f. ;   Nordboernes  Aandsliv,  II.  408. 

3  Refrains  of  rowing  are  found  in  many  Danish  ballads,  mostly  irrelevant,  as 
these  refrains  so  often  are,  but  unmistakable.  See  Steenstrup,  Vore  Folkeviser, 
p.  77,  for  several  examples. 


276  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

Coming  to  land,  one  would  think  that  the  blacksmith, 
rhythmic  as  his  work  may  be,  must  have  little  breath  to 
spare  for  song ;  and,  indeed,  Biicher  could  find  but  one 
specimen  which  seemed  to  hold  the  genuine  rhythm  of  the 
anvil.  Had  he  looked  to  the  English,  however,  he  would 
have  met  more ;  an  old  "  Satire  on  the  Blacksmiths  "  ^  pre- 
serves a  refrain  probably  sung  to  the  work  itself,  or,  at 
worst,  imitated  from  its  cadence:  — 

Thei  gnaven  and  gnacchen,  thei  gronys  togydere.  .  .  . 
Stark  strokes  thei  stryken  on  a  stelyd  stokke, 
Lus !  bus!  Las!  das!  rowten  be  rowe, 
Swych  dolful  a  dreme  the  devyl  it  todryve  ! 
The  mayster  longith  a  lityll,  and  lascheth  a  lesse, 
Twineth  him  tweyn  and  towcheth  a  treble, 
Tik!  tak!  hie!  had  tiket!  taket!  tyk!  tak! 
Lus!  bus!  Las!  das!  swych  lyf  thei  ledyn. 

St.  Clement  is  the  patron  of  blacksmiths,  and  while  Brand's 
account  of  the  festivities  gives  no  refrain,  but  only  poor 
doggerel  and  mimicry,  it  is  clear  that  processions,  songs,  and 
dances  were  a  feature  of  the  saint's  day,^  once  regarded  as 
the  beginning  of  winter ;  so  that  communal  origins  may  even 
lurk  in  the  traditional  anvil  song,  quoted  by  Dickens,^  "  that 

^  In  Wright-Halliwell,  Reliquiae  Antiquae,  I.  240 :  it  belongs  to  the  fourteenth 
century.  Some  rimes  for  St.  Clement's  day  are  printed  by  G.  F.  Northall,  English 
Folk-Rhymes,  1892,  mostly  begging  verses  (pp.  222  fif.)  :  although  there  is  a  cere- 
mony at  Woolwich  connected  with  blacksmiths,  song,  however,  yielding  to  formal 
speech. 

2  23  November.  See  Hampson,  Aledii  Aevi  Kalendarium,  I.  61 ;  and  Brand- 
Ellis,  Antiquities,  same  date.  The  Germanic  year  has  been  recently  studied  by 
Dr.  A.  Tille,  Yule  and  Christmas,  London,  1899;  he  corrects  in  some  particulars 
the  current  ideas  set  forth  by  Weinhold,  according  to  which  the  seasons  were 
regulated  by  natural  signs,  —  solstice  and  the  like.  Dr.  Tille  contends  that  this 
was  rather  done  by  economic  conditions.  Before  the  German  had  a  settled  agri- 
cultural life,  Michaelmas  superseded  Martinmas,  the  oldest  Germanic  festival. 
Actual  harvest  festivals  are  comparatively  late.  While  Dr.  Tille's  idea  of  borrow- 
ing and  of  Christian  influence  goes  entirely  too  far,  his  emphasis  on  economic 
conditions  must  be  noted  and  approved. 

'  Great  Expectations,  Chap.  XII. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        277 

imitated  the  measure  of  beating  upon  iron,  and  was  a  mere 
lyrical  excuse  for  the  introduction  of  Old  Clem's  respected 

name"  :  — 

Hammer,  boys,  round  —  Old  Clem, 
With  a  thump  and  a  sound  —  Old  Clem. 

Again,  there  is  the  tinker  with  his  catches,  which  moved 
Overbury  ^  to  a  theory  of  origins ;  "  from  his  art  was  music 
first  invented,  and  therefore  is  he  alwaies  furnished  with  a 
song,"  to  which  his  hammer  keeps  time.  Of  course,  the 
only  point  of  interest  in  these  songs  of  the  trades  is  the 
survival  of  a  refrain  which  carries  the  sound  and  cadence  of 
the  work  itself.  Thus  in  the  old  play  of  Tom  Tiler  and  his 
Wife,  it  is  probable  that  an  actual  refrain  has  crept  into  the 
lively  song  of  which  Dame  Strife  sings  the  first  staff,  with  its 

Tom  Tiler,  Tom  Tiler, 

More  morter  for  Tom  Tiler,  .   .   . 

clearly  an  echo  from  the  roof.  But  there  is  more  of  the 
communal  strain  in  spinning-songs ;  ^  for  here  is  the  home 
of  balladry,  a  city  of  refuge  even  to  this  day,^  and  here  the 
women  make  as  well  as  sing  the  song.  Echoes  of  the  wheel 
itself  ^  are  not  infrequent ;  perhaps  they  are  too  close  to  art 
in  that  pretty  song  of  sewing,  knitting,  and  spinning,  sung 
by  three  women  in  the  first  act  of  Roister  Doister :  — 

1  Or  rather  Mr.  J.  Cocke;  see  note  to  Works,  ed.  Rimbault,  p.  288,  and  p.  89. 
See  also  the  tinker  as  "  master  of  music  "  and  chief  singer  of  catches,  in  Chappell, 
pp.  187,  353. 

2  Among  the  Romans,  too;  see  Tibullus,  Eleg.  IL  i  :  — 

Atque  aliqua  assiduae  textis  operata  Minervae 
Cantat,  et  applauso  tela  sonat  latere. 

^  See  letter  in  Evening  Post,  quoted  above,  p.  168;  Bockel,  work  quoted;  and 
the  preface  written  by  "  Carmen  Sylva  "  for  the  Countess  Martincngo's  Bard  of 
the  Dimbovitzka,  London,  1892. 

*  It  is  almost  superfluous  to  mention  Gretchen  and  the  recurrent  echo  of  her 
wheel  in  the  stanza  Meine  Riih''  ist  kin.     But  this,  of  course,  is  art. 


278  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Pipe  mery  Annot,  etc. 
Trilla,  trilla,  trillarie, 

Worke  Tibet,  knitte  Annot,  spinne  Margerie  :  ^ 
Let  us  see  who  shall  vvinne  the  victorie.  .  .  . 

although,  what  with  incremental  repetition  in  other  stanzas, 
and  the  audible  whir  of  the  wheel,  this  is  like  the  songs 
which  still  move  women  to  emulation  under  like  circum- 
stances in  the  spinning-rooms  of  Europe.  "  In  Northamp- 
tonshire, when  girls  are  knitting  in  company,  they  say  "  — 
surely  sing  ?  — 

"  Needle  to  needle,  and  stitch  to  stitch, 
Pull  the  old  woman  out  of  the  ditch  ; 
If  you  ain't  out  by  the  time  Tm  in, 
I'll  rap  your  knuckles  with  my  knitting-pin. 

The  'old  woman,'  'out,'  and  'in'  are  the  arrangements  of 
the  wool  over  and  under  the  knitting-pins."^  The  same 
authority  gives  other  rimes  of  this  sort,  more  or  less  sug- 
gested by  the  movements  of  the  work ;  for  instance,  a  song 
of  Cumberland  wool-carders  :  — 

Taary  woo',  taary  woo',  taary  woo'  is  ill  to  spin. 
Card  it  well,  card  it  well,  card  it  well  ere  you  begin. 

Slightly  different  is  the  song  of    Peterborough   workhouse 

girls  in  procession,  where  the  refrain  is  quite  primitive  in 

form  :^  — 

And  a-spinning  we  will  go,  will  go,  will  go, 

And  a-spinning  we  will  go. 

'  A  version  of  "The  Cruel  Brother"  (Child,  I.  147),  from  Forfarshire,  has 
along  with  the  common  refrain  two  lines  at  the  end  of  the  stanza  which  partly 
echo  the  refrain  of  labour :  — 

Sing  Annet,  and  Marret,  and  fair  Maisrie, 
An'  the  dew  hangs  i'  the  wood,  gay  ladie. 

2  Northall,  English  Folk-Rhymes,  p.  322.  See  the  interesting  notes  from 
Southey's  Doctor,  xxiv,  about  Betty  Yewdale  and  the  song  she  and  her  sister  had 
to  sing  while  learning  to  knit  socks.  The  song  kept  time  with  the  work,  and  had 
to  bring  in  the  names  of  all  the  folk  in  the  dale.  See  on  cumulative  song  above, 
p.  200. 

"  Dyer,  British  Popular  Customs,  p.  42. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        279 

Bell  ^  records  what  seems  to  be  a  real  refrain  of  the  spinning- 
wheel  in  the  Greenside  Wakes  Song  :  — 

Tread  the  wheel,  tread  the  wheel,  dan,  don,  dell  O. 

The  flyting  that  goes  with  this  refrain  is  negligible,  —  a  man 
and  a  woman  on  horseback  with  spinning-wheels  before 
them,  singing  alternate  stanzas  in  the  midst  of  the  fair,  with 
its  dancing  and  merriment,  a  sort  of  side-show ;  but  the 
refrain  may  well  be  old. 

Songs  of  the  crafts,  however,  are  less  likely  to  hold  the 
festal,  gregarious,  communal  note  than  those  old  refrains 
which  took  their  cadence  from  the  movements  of  workers  in 
the  field.  An  agricultural  community,  whether  in  its  rudest 
stages,  a  horde  that  lives  in  fertile  river  bottoms  as  distin- 
guished from  the  nomadic,  predatory  bands  of  the  plain,  or 
in  the  civilization  of  feudal  Europe,  always  tends  to  homo- 
geneous conditions  and  always  fosters  communal  song. 
Where  these  conditions  survive,  this  song  in  some  degree 
survives  with  them.  Corsican  labourers  in  the  field,  says 
Ortoli,^  still  sing  so  at  their  work ;  the  Styrian  threshers, 
eight  together,  make  their  flails  chorus  thus :  — 

Hiwer,  hawer,  hawerhaggl, 
Hiwer,  hawer,  hawerhaggl, 

while  Silesians,  with  two,  three,  four,  five,  six,  hear  as  many 
different  refrains  made  by  the  strokes  of  the  flail  ;^  and 
Blade*  prints  a  song  of  Gascon  peasants  which  seems  to  give 
again  all  the  stages  in  the  culture  of  the  vine,  —  a  stanza  or 
two  may  follow  for  example  of  the  repetition  and  the 
refrain  :  — 

1  Ancient  Poems,  Ballads  and  Songs,  London,  1857,  pp.  187  f.  Greenside  is 
near  Manchester. 

2  Voceri,  pp.  244  f.,  with  a  specimen  song  taken  from  Viale. 

3  E.  H.  Meyer,  Volkskunde,  p.  236. 

*  Poes.  Pop.  Gasc,  II.  224  ff.     See  his  references  for  this  interesting  subject. 


28o  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Plante  qui  plante, 
Void  la  belle  plante  ; 
Plante  qui  plante, 
Void  la  belle  plante 

Plantons,  planting 

Plantons  le  bon  vin. 
Void  la  belle  plante  en  vin, 
Void  la  belle  plante  en  vin. 

De  plante  en  taille, 
Void  la  belle  taille  ; 
De  plante  en  taille, 
Void  la  belle  taille. 

Taillons,  iaillm, 

Taillons  le  bon  vin. 
Taillons  la  belle  taille  en  vin. 
Taillons  la  belle  taille  en  vin.^ 

Early  English  drama  was  evidently  fond  of  songs  not  unlike 
this,  and  in  Summer  s  Last  Will  and  Testament  Nash  brings 
harvesters  on  the  scene  singing  what  appears  to  be  a  song  of 
harvest-home,  if  one  may  judge  by  the  refrain  of  Hooky, 
Hooky,  said  by  a  Dodsley  editor  ^  to  be  heard  still  in  some  parts 
of  the  kingdom.  "  Enter  Harvest,"  run  the  directions,  "with 
a  scythe  on  his  neck,  and  all  his  reapers  with  sickles,  and  a 

^  Coussemaker  in  his  section  of  songs  for  the  dance,  work  quoted,  pp.  338  f., 
gives  a  "  ronde  "  sung  during  the  fete  at  Bailleul :  — 

Now  the  salad  must  be  sowed, 
Now  the  salad  must  be  sowed, 
Salad,  salad,  salarl,  salad,  salad. 
Now  the  salad  must  be  sowed. 

Now  the  salad  must  be  cut,  — 

then  plucked,  washed,  dried,  and  so  on.  The  list  of  these  songs  could  be 
extended  indefinitely;  the  fact  that  this  of  the  salad  is  sung  at  a  quite  alien  fes 
tivity  simply  proves  the  vogue  of  the  thing.  One  must  refer,  however,  to  the 
dances  of  Catalonian  peasants  and  children,  the  songs  for  which  are  little  more 
than  repetition  and  refrain  descriptive  of  country  toil,  as  quoted  by  Wolf, 
pp.  34  f.,  of  his  Proben  Porltigiesischer  und  Catalanischer  Volksromanzen,  Wien, 
1856. 

'^  Ed.  1825,  IX.  41.     The  phrase  "to  town"  atv\hich  our  editor  boggles,  igno- 
rant of  its  real  meaning,  is  a  further  i)roof  of  the  traditional  character  of  this  song. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        28 1 

great  black  bowl  with  a  posset  in  it,  come  before  him ;  they 
come  in  singing  :  — 

Merry,  merry,  merry,  cheary,  cheary,  cheary, 

Trowl  the  black  bowl  to  me  ; 
Hey,  derry,  derry,  with  a  poup  and  a  lerry, 

I'll  trowl  it  again  to  thee. 
Hooky,  hooky ^  we  have  shorn, 
And  ive  have  bound, 
And  we  have  brought  Harvest 
Home  to  town. 

The  tendency  to  put  popular  and  traditional  songs  into  a  play 
was  common  everywhere.  Hans  Sachs  ^  used  a  May-song 
for  the  ring-dance  which  is  clearly  made  in  its  turn  out  of  a 
lusty  old  refrain  :  — 

Der  Mei,  der  Mei, 

Der  bringt  uns  bliimlein  vil. 

Best  of  all,  however,  George  Peele,  who  in  his  Old  Wives' 
Tale  gives  tryst  to  countless  waifs  of  folklore  and  popular 
stories,  makes  room  there  for  a  pretty  song  of  harvesters. 
"Ten  to  one,"  cries  Madge,  when  they  first  enter  upon  the 
stage,  "  they  sing  a  song  of  mowing,"  but  they  are  sowing,  it 
seems ;  and  once  again  they  come  in,  this  time  with  a  song 
of  harvest.  The  present  writer  has  ventured  ^  to  change  the 
first  song  so  as  to  make  it  agree  with  the  second,  not  an  auda- 

1  "  Is  your  throat  clear  for  hooky  hooky  ?"  asks  Harvest;  and  the  reapers  sing 
the  refrain  again.  Later  he  speaks  of  weeping  out  "  a  lamentable  hooky  hooky.''^ 
Drake  connected  hooky  with  hockey,  the  hock  or  harvest  cart  sung  by  Herrick. 
But  perhaps  "hooky"  is  to  be  kept  without  any  such  change.  Leyden, see  Com- 
playnte  of  Scotland,  p.  xciii,  speaking  of  ring  dances  at  the  kirn  or  feast  of  cutting 
down  the  grain,  says  that  reapers  who  first  finished  the  work  danced  on  an  emi- 
nence, in  view  of  other  reapers,  and  began  the  dance  "  with  three  loud  shouts  of 
triumph,  and  thrice  tossing  up  their  hooks  in  the  air."  Cf.  the  Oxford  Diet.,  s.v. 
hook,  the  common  word  for  reaping  scythe  or  sickle  from  Anglo-Saxon  down. 

2  In  his  Neydhardt  mit  dent  Feyhel,  1562.  See  Uhland,  Volkslieder,  I.  58,  and 
notes,  Schriften,  III.  24.  Bohme  follows  the  song  back  to  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury. In  the  play  it  is  sung  by  the  duchess  and  repeated  by  the  chorus,  as  in 
popular  dances  of  the  day. 

3  In  his  edition  of  the  play  for  Macmillan's  English  Comedies. 


282  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

cious  feat  when  one  considers  the  case.     The  songs,  with  an 
interval  between,  would  then  run  as  follows :  — 

Lo,  here  we  come  a-sowing,  a-sowing, 

And  sow  sweet  fruits  of  love. 
All  that  lovers  be,  pray  you  for  me,  — 

In  your  sweethearts  well  may  it  prove. 

Lo,  here  ^  we  come  a-reaping,  a-reaping, 

To  reap  our  harvest  fruit ; 
And  thus  we  pass  the  year  so  long, 

And  never  be  we  mute. 

The  refrain  is  easy  to  detach  from  the  rest ;  and  it  is  clear, 
too,  that  actual  imitation  of  sowing,  reaping,  binding,  often 
went  with  the  song,  probably  in  this  case  a  combination  of 
gesture  and  word  known  still  in  games  of  modern  children. 
These  songs,  particularly  the  Gascon  vintage  chorus,  are 
simply  a  festal  recapitulation  of  the  rustic  year,  with  more  or 
less  echo  of  actual  refrain  sung  to  the  labour  in  its  various 
stages.  From  the  moment  when  communal  labour  began  to 
sow  the  seed  —  in  Japan  ^  the  peasants  still  plant  their  rice 
in  cadence  with  a  chorus,  and  in  Cashmere  ^  the  onions  are 
sown  with  accompaniment  of  "  a  long-drawn,  melancholy  song," 
—  through  process  after  process,  down  to  the  picking,^  reaping, 
harvesting,  and  so  to  the  festal  imitations  just  noted,  even  to 
the  ritual  of  priestly  thanksgiving,  every  stage  is  marked  by 
communal  singing,  except  that  in  the  function  last  named  the 

^  The  reapers  now  appear  "  with  women  in  their  hands." 
2  Described  to  the  writer  by  a  Japanese  gentleman. 

*  Biicher,  p.  49. 

*  Twelve  centuries  before  Christ,  Chinese  women  gathered  plantain  with  a  song 
that  is  particularly  rich  in  repetition  and  refrain;  Biicher  quotes  the  translation  of 
Strauss,  of  which  a  stanza  runs  thus  :  — 

Pfliicket,  pfliicket  Wegerich, 

Eija  zu  und  pfliicket  ihn  ! 
Pfliicket,  pfliicket  Wegerich, 

Eija  zu,  ihr  riickct  ihn. 

The  whole  song  minutely  follows  the  process  of  picking. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        283 

community  turns  passive,  the  guild  replaces  the  throng,  and 
art  has  begun  its  course.  Hence  it  is  that  most  of  the  sur- 
vivals of  song  and  refrain  come  down  to  our  day  with  more 
or  less  magic  in  the  case.  Rites  are  performed  by  the  head 
of  a  family,  and  are  even  transferred  from  the  field  to  the 
home  ;  as  when  ^  at  flax-planting  a  German  wife  springs  about 
the  hearth  and  cries,  "  Heads  as  big  as  my  head,  leaves  as  big 
as  my  apron,  and  stalks  as  thick  as  my  leg !  "  In  Silesia,^ 
again,  husband  and  wife  sing  together  a  song  with  the 
refram,  q^  Floxe,  om  Floxe,  om  Floxe  ! 

Even  in  the  field  itself,  song  is  mingled  with  these  symbolical 
and  even  religious  rites ;  incantations,  such  as  that  Anglo- 
Saxon  charm  ^  for  making  barren  or  bewitched  land  bear 
again,  are  strongly  tinged  with  clerical  lore,  and  in  this  case 
involve  a  visit  to  the  church  altar.  The  Romans,  too,  had 
spells  and  charms  for  restoring  fields  to  fertility  when  other 
spells  and  charms  had  bewitched  them ;  harmful  rites  of  this 
sort  were  forbidden  in  the  laws  of  the  twelve  tables.*     Cor- 

1  Grimm,  Mythologie,^  pp.  1036  f.  He  notes  the  frequency  of  this  shouting, 
leaping,  and  singing  at  the  planting  of  crops.  It  all  goes  back,  of  course,  to 
communal  rites. 

-  E.  H.  Meyer,  Volkskunde,  p.  225. 

3  Grein-Wiilker,  Bihlioihek,  I.  312  ff.  To  describe  the  whole  ceremony  in  this 
case  as  original,  is  highly  absurd. 

*  Z&\\, Ferienschrifien,  II.  1 18,  212;  see  Plin,  Nat.  Hisi.,XXNll\.2  :  "qui  fruges 
excantasset."  Standard  works  for  the  investigation  of  these  relics  of  ancient 
cult  are  Mannhardt,  IVald-und  Feldkulte,  2  vols.,  1875-1877;  the  same  author's 
Mythologische  Forsckuugen,  already  quoted;  Pfannenschmid,  Germanische  Ernte- 
feste,  Hannover,  1878;  and,  pioneer  of  them  all,  Tylor's  admirable  work  on 
Primitive  Culture.  For  children's  games,  as  last  refuge  of  many  of  these  rites, 
see  F.  M.  'Eohme,  Deuisches  Kinderlied u.  Kinderspiel,  Leipzig,  1897,  which  could 
be  enlarged  by  a  judicious  use  of  Firmenich,  Gerinaniens  Vdlkersiimmen,  in  four 
volumes.  Bohme  says  the  Ringelreihen  of  these  games  are  "  uralte  Reste  chorischer 
Auffiihrungen  bei  den  Jahres-und  Gottesfesten  unserer  heidnischen  Vorfahren," 
and  gives  cases  which  support  his  statement.  Processional  songs  of  the  old 
cult  survive  in  the  Ansingelieder,  Umzugslieder,  and  so  forth,  of  the  children, 
now  mainly  begging-rimes  like  the  wren-song  in  Ireland  and  England,  parallel 
to  the  swallow-song  in  Rhodes.    Again,  children  have  games  which  imitate  sounds 


284  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

ruption  is  rife  in  these  things ;  but  in  a  charm  ^  for  the  old 

English  peasant  to  get  back  his  strayed  or  stolen  cattle,  amid 

the  hocus-pocus  of  Herod  and  Judas  and  the  holy  rood  and 

scraps  of  Latin,  a  few  lines  echo  the  old  repetition,  but  have 

no  refrain :  —  .    ,  ,     r    «      ,  ,  •      ,     r 

find  the  fee  ^  and  drive  the  fee, 

and  have  the  fee  and  hold  the  fee, 

and  drive  home  the  fee. 

A  thousand  things  of  the  sort  survive,  but  seldom  touch  the 
refrain ;  perhaps  the  charm  to  make  butter  come  from  the 
churn,  common  in  1655,^  had  a  choral  element:  — 

Come,  butter,  come  ! 
Come,  butter,  come  ! 
Peter  stands  at  the  gate 
Waiting  for  a  butter'd  cake,  — 
Come,  butter,  come  ! 

We  turn  back  to  the  actual  labour  of  the  fields,  and  the 
songs  and  refrains  that  went  with  it.  A  refrain  *  has  come 
down  to  us  from  the  harvesters  of  ancient  Hellas,  —  "  Sing 
the  sheaf-song,  the  sheaf-song,  the  song  of  the  sheaf,"  which 
is  not  unlike  the  type  just  considered  in  George  Peele's  "  Lo, 
here  we  come  a-reaping " ;  while  that  waif  of  Germanic 
myth,^  the  story  of  Sc^af,  where  the  "  sheaf "  is  made  the 

and  movements  of  labour ;  Bohme  gives  a  few.  See  also  G.  F.  Northall,  English 
Folk-Rhymes,  pp.  360  ff.  Halliwell,  of  course,  includes  some  of  these  in  his 
nursery-rimes.  See  also  W.  W.  Newell,  Games  and  Songs  of  American  Children, 
N.  Y.,  1883.  These  songs  of  the  children  would  lead  us  too  far  a-field,  and  we 
shall  cling  to  the  scanty  survivals  of  the  songs  and  refrains  of  labour  itself. 

1  Grein-WiilUer,  I.  323  f.,  especially  version  C. 

2  Cattle. 

8  Halliwell,  Nursery- Rhymes,  p.   129. 

*  Mannhardt,  Mythol.  Forsch.,  pp.  228  ff.,  J.  Grimm,  Kl.  Schr.,  VII.  229,  in  a 
paper  on  the  "  Nothhalm,"  with  account  of  harvest  rites. 

^  This  child  of  destmy,  asleep  on  a  sheaf  of  grain,  is  wafted  to  the  kingless  land 
in  a  boat,  —  the  Lohengrin  parallel.  For  all  the  enticing  material  see  Grimm, 
Mythologie,^  III.  399  ff.;  MuUenhoff,  in  Zeitschr.  f.  deutsch.  Alth.,  VII.4iofT.,  and 
in  his  Beowulf,  pp.  5  ff.,  with  strongly  established  probability  that  the  myth  cele- 
brates the  beginnings  of  agriculture  among  Germans  by  the  North  and  Baltic  seas. 


THE    DIFFERENCING    COMMUNAL    ELEMENTS         285 

name  of  an  agricultural  god,  or  culture-hero,  as  one  will, 
reminds  us  of  Phrygian  countryfolk  who  at  their  reaping 
sang  "  in  mournful  wise "  the  song  of  Lityerses,  itself  said 
to  be  the  outcome  of  an  old  refrain,  lapsing  into  a  vocero  for 
the  hero's  death.  Burlesque  laid  unholy  hands  upon  the 
custom  and  the  myth ;  the  story  growing  out  of  the  song 
passed  into  a  tradition  which  coldly  furnished  forth  the  satire 
and  comedy  of  a  later  day ;  since  any  song  of  the  harvest- 
field  or  the  threshing-floor  came  to  be  called  a  Lityerses,^  the 
name  was  seized  upon  for  certain  comic  features,  and  grew 
to  be  a  symbol  of  an  insatiable  eater.  Yet  dramatic  allusions 
and  uses  of  more  serious  nature,  like  the  song  recorded  by 
Peele,  were  doubtless  common  in  Greece  and  throughout  the 
Orient.  It  has  been  said  already,  in  speaking  of  the  vocero, 
that  the  song  of  Maneros  was  sung  by  Egyptian  reapers, 
just  as  they  sang  on  the  threshing-floor  the  song  of  the  oxen 
treading  out  the  corn ;  while  at  the  harvest-home  Greek  hus- 
bandmen, if  Mannhardt's  surmise  ^  is  right,  sang  a  variant  of 
the  Maneros ;  and  Homer  is  witness  for  the  singing  of  the 
Linos  at  the  time  of  vintage.^  If,  now,  one  seeks  for  similar 
songs  in  the  fields  of  modern  Europe,  one  finds,  to  be  sure, 
hints  in  plenty,  descriptions  by  this  and  that  traveller,  and 
fragments  of  actual  verse ;  but  conditions  of  religious  cere- 
monial have  broken  up  the  old  refrains  and  barred  any  hand- 
ing down  of  a  Germanic  Linos  or  Lityerses.     Customs,  too, 

1  Mannhardt,  Myth.  Forsch.,  pp.  15  ff.  That  the  Greeks  sang  at  reaping,  as  at 
planting  (Smythe,  Melic  Poets,  p.  498,  girls  sing  a  sowers'  song),  is  beyond  ques- 
tion. See  Mannhardt's  note  and  references,  as  above,  p.  2.  He  remarks  that  the 
Lityerses  song  in  Theocritus  (Id.  X.)  is  an  imitation  of  a  real  Greek  folksong  of 
labour,  not,  however,  of  the  original  Lityerses.  Mr.  Lang  notes  the  resemblance 
of  this  situation  to  the  famous  scene  in  Moliere's  Misanthrope. 

2  Work  quoted,  p.  17.     See  his   IVald-u.  Feldkulle,  p.  262. 

^  That  the  Romans  had  these  refrains  of  harvest  and  vintage,  as  well  as  their 
Fescennine  flytings  and  improvised  satire,  is  beyond  dispute  (Zell,  II.  122  ff.),  but 
nothing  of  it  all  has  come  down  to  us.  Fortune  has  been  kinder  with  regard  to 
the  songs  and  refrains  sung  in  processions  about  the  Roman  field. 


286  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

have  changed  ;  and  few  are  the  places  where  folk  at  harvest- 
home  do  as  their  forbears  did,  when  "the  whole  family  sat 
down  at  the  same  table,  and  conversed,  danced,  and  sang 
together  during  the  entire  night  without  difference  or  dis- 
tinction of  any  kind  "  as  between  master  and  man,  mistress 
and  maid.^  Add  to  the  case  that  great  transfer  of  vital 
interests  upon  which  economists  lay  such  stress,  from  open- 
air  life  to  home-life,  from  the  throng  with  its  indiscriminate 
dance  and  merriment,  often,  too,  its  indiscriminate  morals, 
its  communal  habit  of  thought  and  expression,  to  the  indi- 
vidual responsibility,  the  sober  pleasures  and  the  stricter 
morals  of  the  fireside,  from  the  delight  in  movement,  noise, 
cadence  of  many  voices,  to  lamplight  and  the  printed  page 
and  meditation  :  add  this  to  the  account,  and  one  sees  how 
ill  it  must  have  fared  with  the  communal  refrain  of  work, 
feast,  and  ceremonial  rite.  Reactions  come,  of  course,  and 
no  one  denies  a  constant  market  for  cakes  and  ale ;  but  what 
is  a  church  fair,  even  a  camp-meeting,  to  the  old  vigil  ?  The 
wife  of  Bath  is  still  with  us,  but  she  has  to  make  shift  with 
an  afternoon  tea.  Disintegration,  due  to  the  lapse  of  com- 
munal feeling,  has  either  broken  up  the  traditional  refrains, 
leaving  only  Hooky,  hooky^  and  unmeaning  things  of  the 
kind,  or  else  has  favoured  the  making  of  doggerel  which 
may  or  may  not  mean  something,  and  which  in  any  case 
threatens  the  student  with  perils  of  a  too  curious  interpre- 

^  Chappell,  II.  580.  See  his  quotation  from  Tusser.  Even  here,  in  the  Eastern 
states  of  America,  middle-aged  men  have  watched  the  passing  of  the  "  wealthy 
farmer,"  who  now  exists  only  in  newspapers,  and  even  there  is  kept  at  long 
range,  —  "of  Indiana,"  "of  Texas."  Yet  we  knew  him  in  our  boyhood.  The 
communal  farmer  occurs  in  old  English  novels,  and  in  some  new  ones;  but  he  is 
passing  rapidly  into  tradition.  See  a  paper  on  "  England's  Peasantry,"  by  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Jessopp,  m  the  Nineteenth  Century  and  After,  January,  1901 ;  he  tells 
of  the  communal  conditions  which  once  prevailed,  of  the  change  to  the  present, 
and  is  "inclined  to  doubt  seriously  whether  before  another  century  has  ended 
there  will  be  any  such  thing  as  an  agricultural  labourer  to  know." 

2  On  the  modern  corruption  of  old  refrains,  see  Pfannenschmid,  pp.  207  ff.,  468  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        287 

tation  of  chops  and  tomato-sauce.  Even  where  there  is 
neither  corruption  nor  distortion,  there  is  unblushing  if  often 
innocent  substitution  of  modern  mawkishness.  Precisely  as 
one  boggles,  when  reading  Herd's  Scottish  Songs,  to  find 
under  the  title  "  I  wish  my  Love  were  in  a  Myre  "  the  famil- 
iar translation  of  Sappho's  "  Blest  as  the  Immortal  Gods,"  — 
so,  in  coming  to  the  "  Cornish  Midsummer  Bonfire  Song,"  in 
Bell's  collection,  a  title  to  make  any  student  of  communal 
poetry  get  out  a  fresh  pen,  and  in  reading,  too,  that  here 
"fishermen  and  others  dance  about  the  fire  and  sing  appro- 
priate songs,"  one  pulls  up  with  a  rude  shock  at  — 

Hail  !  lovely  nymphs,  be  not  too  coy, 
But  freely  yield  your  charms,^ 

which,  while  appropriate  in  sentiment,  has  not  the  note  of 
simplicity  that  one  expects  from  Cornish  fishermen  dancing 
round  the  bonfire  of  heathen  tradition.  True,  this  is  a  very 
bad  counterfeit ;  but  many  a  verse  quite  as  alien  at  heart,  if 
not  on  the  face,  has  been  foisted  upon  communal  and  tradi- 
tional song. 

The  best  survivals  come  from  the  harvest  field,  and  mingle 
refrain  with  improvisation.  Very  common  in  old  times  and 
in  new  is  the  note  of  ridicule,  particularly  for  the  wayfaring 
man,  converted  temporarily  into  a  fool,  who  passes  by  the 
labourers ;  such  a  man  even  now  gets  rude  handling  as  well 
as  rude  rimes,  and  this  was  the  case  in  Hellas.^  In  an  often- 
quoted  Idyll  of  Ausonius  there  is  reference  to  the  exchange 

1  Compare  the  song  sung  on  this  occasion  in  Bavaria  as  the  peasants  dance 
about  the  fire  and  leap  over  it  for  good  luck  (Firmenich,  II.  703)  :  — 

Haliga  Sankt  Veit, 

Schick  uns  a  Scheit; 

Haliga  Sankt  Wendl, 

Schick  uns  an  Bengl; 

Haliga  Sankt  Florio, 

Kent  uns  des  Fuiar  O ! 
Kent  =  kindle. 
'  Mannhardt,  3f.  /^,  pp.  32  fi.,  51. 


288  THE   BEGINNINGS  OF   POETRY 

of  abusive  lyric  compliments  between  workers  in  the  field  and 
the  boatmen  on  the  Moselle  ;  while  any  one  can  note  how 
this  instinct  for  a  flyting  between  labourers  in  a  band  and  the 
spectator  ab  extra,  alone  or  in  company,  holds  always  and 
everywhere,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  solitary  labourer 
and  the  solitary  wanderer  are  wont  to  pass  the  time  of  day 
with  full  courtesy  and  often  with  an  inexplicably  kindly  feeling. 
German  peasants  breaking  flax  in  the  fields  still  sing  to  the 
rhythm  of  their  strokes ;  as  in  the  old  days,  a  stranger  who 
passes  by  them  is  sure  to  be  hailed  in  improvised  verses  not  of 
a  complimentary  kind.  Particularly  if  the  stranger  be  a  young 
gentleman,  a  possible  suitor  for  one  of  the  daughters  at  the 
great  house,  sarcastic  song  greets  him  from  twenty  or  thirty 
throats,  mainly  a  refrain,  and  that  partly  of  an  imitative 
character,  with  derisive  Hnes  like :  — 

Too  fat  is  he  quite, 
And  he  isn't  poHte, 

with  the  refrain  for  conclusion,  — 

Hurrah,  let  him  go!^ 

All  this,  of  course,  to  the  exact  time  of  the  work  in  hand. 
When  no  stranger  offers,  mutual  flytings  will  serve.  Near 
Soest  all  the  young  people  shout  and  sing  throughout  the  entire 
process  of  preparing  flax,  —  "  unsung  flax,"  they  say,  "is  good 
for  nothing,"  —  and  songs  are  improvised  in  satire  of  one  an- 
other, with  a  refrain  rumniel  diimm  dian  or  rem  sen  jo  jo. 
Travelling  in  Wales,  by  the  bye,  had  once  these  chances  of 

'Quoted  by  Reifferscheid,  Westf.  Volksl,  Nos.  49,  50,  51.  See  the  note, 
p.  188,  and  variants.  The  habit  is  widespread  through  Westphaha  and  the  Rhine- 
lands.  A  refrain  printed  by  Firmenich,  German.  Volkerstimmen,  III.  175,  keeps 
time  with  the  work  (near  Iserlohn)  :  — 

Dai  Klinge  dai  klank, 
Dai  Iliippe  dai  sprank, 
Wuol  uowLT  <lc  I'ank, 
Wuol  niiiwen  den  Pal. 


THE    DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        289 

satire,  and  Aubrey  tells  about  them,  thinking  doubtless  of  his 
favourite  time  "before  the  civil  warres."  For  in  Wales  there 
were  not  only  "  rymers  .  .  .  that  upon  any  subject  given 
would  versify  extempore  halfe  an  hour  together,"  but  "the 
vulgar  sort  of  people  .  .  .  have  a  humour  of  singing  extem- 
pore upon  occasion  :  e.g.  a  certain  gentleman  coming  to , 

the  woemen  that  were  washing  at  ye  river  fell  all  a  singing  in 
Welsh,  w*^  was  a  description  of  ye  men  and  their  horses."  ^ 
How  facile  the  black  fellows  of  Australia,  Africans,  and  sav- 
ages everywhere,  can  be  with  this  improvised  ridicule,  mainly 
practised  on  the  march,  or  at  some  sort  of  labour,  all  travel- 
lers testify.  Samoans  sing  instead  of  talking  "  as  they  walk 
along  the  road,  or  paddle  the  canoe,  or  do  any  other  piece  of 
work.  These  songs  often  contain  sarcastic  remarks,  and  in 
passing  the  house  or  village  of  parties  with  whom  they  are 
displeased,  they  strike  up  a  chant  embodying  some  offensive 
ideas."  2 

We  must  keep  to  the  harvest  fields.  Wordsworth's  soli- 
tary reaper  called  forth  an  exquisite  lyric ;  but  there  is 
material  more  attractive  for  the  student  of  refrains,  however 
it  lack  poetic  merit,  in  Boswell's  and  Johnson's  stories  of 
a  Highland  harvest,  and  one  would  be  glad  indeed  if  the 
doctor,  who  had  all  of  Wordsworth's  curiosity  on  this  point, 
could  have  made  the  reapers  tell  him  what  they  sang.'^  He 
was  coming  close  to  Rasay  in  a  boat,  while,  as  Boswell 
says,  the  boatmen  "  sang  with  great  spirit,"  and  Johnson  re- 
marked   that  "  naval    music  was  very  ancient "  ;  *   then    the 

^  Aubrey,  Remains  of  Gentilisvie.  Folk-Lore  Soc,  IV.  (1881),  pp.  81  f., 
under  "Rymers."  On  p.  169  he  says,  "when  I  was  a  boy,  every  gentleman 
almost  kept  a  harper;  and  some  of  them  could  versifie." 

'  Wallaschek,  p.  179. 

^  He  too  heard  a  girl  "singing  an  Erse  song,"  as  she  span;  and  he  had  his 
jest,  "  I  warrant  you,  one  of  the  songs  of  Ossian."     Hill's  Boswell,  V.  133  f. 

*  Before  this  he  had  been  in  a  boat  and  heard  one  Malcolm  sing  "  an  Erse 
song,  the  chorus  of  which  was  '  Hatyin  foam  foam  eri,'  with  words  of  his  own. 
.  .  .  The  boatmen  and  Mr.  M'Queen  chorused,  and  all  went  well."  Ibid.,  V.  185. 
u 


290  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

men  were  silent,  and  from  the  near  fields  was  heard  the 
song  of  reapers,  "  who  seemed  to  shout  as  nnich  as  to  sing, 
while  they  worked  with  a  botindmg  activity.'"  Johnson's 
own  account  1  of  reaping  on  Rasay  may  refer  to  this  or  to 
another  occasion.  "  I  saw,"  he  says,  "  the  harvest  of  a  small 
field.  The  women  reaped  the  corn,  and  the  men  bound  up 
the  sheaves.  The  strokes  of  the  sickle  were  timed  by  the 
modulations  of  the  harvest-song  in  which  all  their  voices 
were  united.  They  accompany  in  the  Highlands  every 
action  which  can  be  done  in  equal  time  with  an  appropri- 
ate strain,  which  has,  they  say,  not  much  meaning ;  ^  but 
its  effects  are  regularity  and  cheerfulness."  These  hints 
from  the  Highlands  are  of  peculiar  importance  because  of 
the  undoubted  homogeneous  conditions  of  life  in  the  clans, 
keeping  songs  of  this  sort  in  an  almost  primitive  state. 
Significant  is  the  rhythm  of  shouts,  significant  the  prepon- 
derance of  the  refrain.  Lady  Rasay  showed  Johnson  "  the 
operation  of  wawking  cloth.  Here  it  is  performed  by  women 
who  kneel  upon  the  ground  and  rub  it  with  both  their  hands, 
singing  an  Erse  song  all  the  time."  Boswell  speaks  of  their 
"loud  and  wild  howl";  and  Dr.  Hill^  quotes  Lockhart  that 
women  at  this  work  screamed  "  all  the  while  in  a  sort  of 
chorus.  At  a  distance  the  sound  was  wild  and  sweet 
enough,  but  rather  discordant "  at  close  quarters. 

The  Lowlands  of  Scotland,  too,  had  their  kini,^  and  the 
English  harvest-home,  practically  the  same  thing,  had  merry 
songs    and    refrains   down   to    living   memory.     What  must 

'  A  Journey  to  the  Western  Islands,  Dublin,  1775,  p.  97. 

2  The  doctor  complaining  that  he  never  could  get  an  Erse  song  explained,  was 
told  "  the  chorus  was  generally  unmeaning,"  which,  of  course,  would  point  to  a 
predominance  of  the  refrain;  Johnson  himself  slyly  quoted  an  unintelligible 
refrain  from  an  old  English  ballad.      Hill's  Boswell,  V.  274. 

3  V.  203;  Lockhart's  Life  0/  Scott,  IV.  307.  Pennant  tells  the  same  story  in  his 
Tour  in  Scotland. 

*  See  above,  p.  281,  quotation  from  Leyden.  See  also  for  Scottish  custom. 
Chambers,  Book  0/ Days,  II.  376  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        291 

these  songs  have  been,  when,  if  Professor  Skeat  ^  is  right  in 
his  estimate  and  inference,  on  one  estate  of  two  hundred 
acres  in  Suffolk  no  less  than  five  hundred  and  fifty-three 
persons  were  assembled  for  harvest  ?  At  almost  any  period 
of  EngHsh  country  life  one  finds  the  rural  philosopher 
looking  back,  like  the  Rev.  Dr.  Jessopp  now,^  to  kindlier  and 
more  communal  times,  greater  harvests,  keener  jollity,  a  wider 
and  deeper  social  sense ;  so  Overbury's  frankUn  felt  that 
he  held  a  brief  for  the  tenipus  actum.  "  He  allows  of 
honest  pastime,  and  thinkes  not  the  bones  of  the  dead  any- 
thing bruised,  or  the  worse  for  it,  though  the  country  lasses 
dance  in  the  churchyard  after  even-song.  Rocke  Monday, 
and  the  wake  in  summer,  shrovings,  the  wakefull  ketches 
on  Christmas  eve,  the  hoky  or  seed-cake,  these  he  yearly 
keepes."  Of  this  festal  round  harvest-home  was  culmina- 
tion, since  it  knitted  tlie  bond  between  labour  and  rest, 
and  was  the  pledge  of  plenty,  the  high  tide  of  the  agri- 
cultural year.  Three  elements  may  be  noted  in  this  harvest- 
home  so  far  as  the  refrain  is  concerned ;  first,  the  shouting, 
the  choral  cries  and  songs  of  the  labourers  in  the  field  as 
the  last  sheaf  is  cut  and  bound ;  secondly,  the  march  home- 
ward with  the  hock-cart  to  the  cadence  of  loud  refrains  and 
songs,  with  the  thrice-repeated  procession  about  barn  and 
yard ;  and  thirdly,  the  more  elaborate  ceremonial  of  those 
gatherings  which  marked  the  safe  accomplishment  of  har- 
vest. Moreover,  in  any  of  these  cases  a  progress  may  be 
noted  from  the  rude  but  cadenced  shouts,  the  refrains  and 
chorals,  through  definite  songs  of  harvest,  up  to  all  manner 
of  offshoots  and  distortions,  —  fixed  rites,  speeches,  sermons, 
pantomime,  beggings,  what  not ;  but  even  in  the  last  and 
worse  estate  of  the  communal  harvest-song  there  is  every- 
where echo  of  the  refrain,  everywhere  echo  of   the  dance. 

1  Note  to  Passus,  IX.  104,  ed.  of  Piers  Plowman,  version  C. 
^  Above,  p.  286. 


292  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF    POETRY 

The  breaking  up  of  communal  labour  has  left  mainly  the 
songs  and  cries  of  working  folk  on  any  given  farm  or 
estate ;  but  the  songs  of  a  common  festival  for  harvested 
crops  still  linger  in  customs  of  the  village,  —  now  a  tra- 
ditional march  of  the  elder  folk,  now  some  half-under- 
stood dance  and  walk  of  the  maidens,  such  as  Hardy 
describes  in  his  Tess,  and  now  a  mere  song  of  village 
children  coming  in  a  band  from  the  search  for  berries,  as 
in  the  Black  Forest :  — 

Holla,  holla,  reera, 

Mer  kumme  us  d'Beere.^ 

Lithuanians  coming  back  from  the  field,  or  in  any  com- 
munal gathering,  when  they  have  sung  through  their  tradi- 
tional stock  of  songs,  call  for  a  new  ditty ;  amid  jest  and 
jollity  some  one  strikes  up  a  dama  of  his  own,  composing 
as  he  sings ;  the  rest  repeat  in  chorus,  correct  the  words, 
add  to  them,  —  and  so  a  new  song  is  made,  and,  if  it  finds 
favour,  is  handed  down,  and  even  passed  to  the  neighbour 
villages.  This  custom,  however,  is  fast  going  out  of  date.^ 
In  some  places  the  day  when  harvest  begins  is  still  a 
time  of  communal  and  ritual  importance ;  Wiirtemberg 
reapers,  men  and  women,  gather  in  the  early  dawn  and  sing 
a  choral  for  blessing  on  their  work.^  As  they  go  to  the 
field,  the  throng  still  sing  choruses,  improvised  verses,  and 
traditional  ballads ;  and  when  they  march  home  at  dusk  to 
their  village,  they  sing  songs,  often  modern  enough,  but,  as 

1  E.  H.  Meyer,  p.  133. 

2  Kurschat,  Litth.  Gram.,  p.  445,  quoted  by  Bockel,  p.  cxx. 

3  Pfannenschmid,  p,  392.  The  song,  "  Die  Ernt'  ist  da,  es  winkt  der  Halm," 
is  clearly  an  outgrowth  of  the  older  refrain.  See  also  p.  92.  An  actual  refrain  at 
the  work  is  printed  by  Firmenich,  III.  631 :  — 

Ei  Hober,  Hober,  zeitige  Hober ! 

Ei  Madl,  kom  und  schneid  den  Hober! 

Ei  dirre  Hober,  dirre  Hober  ! 

Ei  Knechtl,  kom  und  bcnn  den  Hober! 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        293 

Pfannenschmid  points  out,  substitutes  for  older  and  doubt- 
less far  more  communal  singing,  which  indeed  lingers  in 
the  unintelligible  refrain.  In  many  places,  however,  chorus, 
refrain  and  song,  whether  communal  or  alien,  to  be  sung  at 
harvest  and  threshing,  are  dying  out  or  dead ;  in  Normandy, 
says  Beaurepaire,^  at  the  fete  de  la  gerbe,  when  the  last  of 
the  wheat  is  threshed,  no  song  of  any  sort  is  heard,  though 
elsewhere  the  festival  is  loud  with  chorus.  A  scrap  of  the 
refrain  sung  in  another  part  of  France  — 

Ho  !  batteux,  battons  la  gerbe, 
Battons-la  joyeusement,  .  .  . 

Beaurepaire  heard,  to  be  sure,  here  and  there  in  Normandy ; 
but  it  was  no  longer  a  refrain  of  labour,  and  was  attached 
to  a  love-song.2 

The  main  ceremony,  of  course,  is  at  the  end  of  harvest.  In 
many  places  a  custom  still  prevails,  that  when  the  last  sheaf 
is  to  be  cut,  a  portion  of  grain  is  left  standing,  and  the  reapers 
now  dance  about  it  with  repeated  cries,  sometimes  of  vague 
mythological  tradition  like  "  Wold,  Wold,  Wold,"  and  with 
songs;  now  bare  their  heads,  and  pour  food  and  drink  upon 
the  spot;  now  let  the  "bonniest  lass  "  cut  this  remnant,  dress 
it,  and  bring  it  home  as  the  "corn-baby  ";  now  throw  their 

1  Aiude,  pp.  24  f. 

2  In  this  dying  of  communal  song,  its  heart,  the  refrain,  beats  strong  to  the 
end,  despite  the  other  failing  powers.  See  Beaurepaire's  valuable  testimony  to 
this  fact,  itude,  pp.  39  ff.,  48  f.  "  Deux  lignes  au  plus  composent  le  couplet.  Le 
refrain  est  vraiment  la  partie  importante,  il  supplie  a  la  pauvrete  ou  a  I'absence  de 
la  rime.  .  .  .  Au  reste,  il  ne  faudrait  pas  s'y  tromper,  la  longueur  du  refrain,  et  son 
retour  continuel,  que  nous  serions  tente  de  considerer  comme  un  defaut,  forme  pre- 
cisement  un  des  plus  sflrs  moyens  du  succes  de  la  Chanson  de  Filasse.  EUe  exige, 
en  effet,  peu  d'efforts  de  memoire,  elle  permet  \  tous  les  laboureurs  de  prendre 
part  frequemment  au  chant;  et  avec  son  allure  monotone,  elle  s'adapte  merveil- 
leusement  a  la  marche  lente  et  reguliere  de  travaux  de  la  campagne.  Aussi 
croyons-nous  que  c'est  en  partie  a  la  predominance  du  refrain,  que  la  chanson 
cuellissoire  doit  sa  vogue  et  sa  popularite."  He  gives  another  song  with  a  refrain 
of  planting. 


294  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY 

sickles  at  it  to  see  who  can  cut  it  down  ;  ^  and  so  on,  in  variety 
of  form,  but  all  to  the  same  purpose.  In  Flanders  they  sing, 
when  the  last  load  is  taken  from  the  field, 

Keriole,  keriole,  al  in  ! 
't  loaste  voer  goat  in. 
Keriole,  Keriole,  al  in  !  ^ 

There  is  every  reason  to  think  that  some  rite  of  this  sort, 
accompanied  with  communal  refrain  and  song,  was  once 
universal  in  agricultural  life.^  The  corn-baby  just  described 
as  decked  in  silk  and  ribbons  and  brought  home  with  sing- 
ing, is  also  known  as  the  kirn-baby,  the  ivy-girl,  and  the 
maiden  ;  so  that  harvest-home  is  here  and  there  called  the 
maiden-feast.*  The  songs  belong  primarily  on  the  field  and 
with  the  homeward  faring  cart ;  but  customs  change.  In 
Suffolk  at  harvest  suppers  some  one  is  crowned  with  a  pillow 
and  the  folk  all  sing  /  atn  tJie  Duke  of  Norfolk^  though 
elsewhere  in  the  country  the  old  note  remains.  Still  farther 
from  the  field,  Hertfordshire  countrymen  sing  The  Barley 
Mow  in  alehouses  after  their  day's  labour ;  but  in  another 
part  of  Suffolk  this  is  a  festal  song  chanted  at  the  harvest- 
supper  "  when  the  stack,  rick,  or  mow  of  barley  is  finished." 
It  is  a  song  of  repetitions,  and  holds  an  old  refrain.^  For  this 
song  at  the  harvest-home  supper,  its  variations,  corruptions, 

^  Pfannenschmid  (on  the  cries  and  songs)  pp.  404  ff. ;  Mannhardt,  M.  F., 
pp.  167  ff.,  for  the  religious  significance;  J.  Grimm,  Kl.  Schr.,  VII.  225  f.;  Book 
of  Days,  II.  377  f.     Other  instances  are  presently  to  be  recounted. 

2  Firmenich,  IV.  {Anhattg),  687.  A  longer  version  on  p.  693,  Keriole  = 
Kyrie  eleison,  —  substituted  for  an  older  heathen  cry. 

^  See  Mannhardt's  chapter  on  "  Demeter,"  work  quoted;  also  pp.  20  ff. 

*  For  all  this  English  material,  see  Brand-Ellis,  "  Harvest  Home,"  in  the 
Anti(juities. 

^  Chappell,  I.  120. 

•5  Iliid.,  II.  745,  one  version.  See  for  variants,  and  similar  songs,  J.  H.  Dixon, 
Ancient  Poems,  Ballads,  and  Songs  of  the  Peasantry  of  England,  e.g.  pp.  175  ff., 
London,  Percy  Soc,  1846;  Broadwood  and  Maitland,  English  Country  Songs, 
pp.  150  ff.,  London,  1893. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        295 

survivals,  its  refrains,  and  its  choruses,  one  would  need  a 
book ;  a  description  or  two  of  recent  doings  must  suffice. 
"  At  the  harvest  suppers  up  to  some  twenty  years  ago," 
say  Broadwood  and  Maitland,  "  while  the  other  guests  were 
still  seated  at  the  table,  a  labourer  carrying  a  jug  or  can  of 
beer  or  cider  filled  a  horn  for  every  two  men,  one  on  each 
side  of  the  table ;  as  they  drank,  this  old  harvest-song  was 
sung  and  the  chorus  repeated,  until  the  man  with  the  beer 
had  reached  the  end  of  the  long  table,  involving  sometimes 
thirty  repetitions  of  the  first  verse.  After  this,  the  second 
verse  was  sung  in  the  same  manner."  The  chorus  —  from 
Wiltshire  —  ran  thus  :  — 

So  drink,  boys,  drink,  and  see  that  you  do  not  spill, 

For  if  you  do,  you  shall  drink  two,  for  'tis  our  masters  will. 

What  is  left  here  of  communal  song  is  the  fact  of  the 
chorus  and  the  infinite  repetition  ;  the  song  has  a  poor  mix- 
ture of  the  bucolic  with  the  buckish.  The  older  collection  of 
Dixon  gives  a  better  song  :  — 

Our  oats  they  are  howed  and  our  barley's  reaped, 
Our  hay  is  mowed  and  our  hovels  heaped, 

Harvest  Home  !     Harvest  Home  ! 
We'll  merrily  roar  out  Harvest  Home  ! 

Harvest  Home  !  Harvest  Home! 
We'll  .  .  . 

with  another  repetition  of  the  line.^  The  men  who  sang  this 
chorus  were  still  in   thrall  to  an   old   custom  at  the  barley 

^  In  the  fifth  act  of  Dryden's  opera,  King  Arthur,  is  a  harvest-song  with  this 
chorus :  — 

Come,  boys,  come  !     Come,  boys,  come  ! 
And  merrily  roar  out  Harvest  Home  ! 

and  the  directions  are  that  the  actors  shall  sing  this  as  they  dance,  a  good  com- 
munal trait.  The  words  of  this  song  grew  popular,  were  varied,  and  became  a 
ballad;  it  is  in  order  for  some  one  to  show  that  harvest-home  songs,  like  other 
popular  verse,  come  from  operas,  plays,  concerts,  and  the  like. 


296  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

harvest.  On  putting  up  the  last  sheaf,  which  is  called  the 
craw,  or  crow  sheaf,  the  man  who  has  it  cries  out,  — 

I  have  it,  I  have  it,  I  have  it ! 
Another  asks,  — 

What  hav'ee,  what  hav'ee,  what  hav'ee  ? 
And  the  answer  comes,  — 

A  craw,  a  craw,  a  craw  ! 

Then  wild  cheering,  and  off  they  go  to  the  supper,  where  they 
sing  a  well-known  cumulative  song  about  the  brown  bowl,  the 
quarter-pint,  the  half-pint,  and  so  on. 

These  repeated  cries,  however,  take  us  back  to  the  field.  In 
Devon,  as  Brand  relates,  they  still  cried  "  the  neck  "  ;  a  little 
bundle  was  made  from  the  best  ears  of  the  sheaves,  and  when 
the  last  field  was  reaped,  all  gathered  about  the  person  who 
had  this  neck,  who  first  stooped  and  held  it  near  the  ground. 
All  the  men  doffed  their  hats  and  held  them  likewise  and 
then  cried,  in  a  very  prolonged  and  harmonious  tone,  TJie 
Neck,  at  the  same  time  raising  themselves  upright,  and  ele- 
vating arms  and  hats  above  their  heads,  the  holder  of  the 
neck  doing  likewise.  This  was  done  thrice  ;  after  which  they 
changed  their  cry  to  zvee  ye7i}  way  yen,  prolonged  as  before,  and 
also  sounded  thrice ;  then  boisterous  laughter,  amidst  which 
they  break  up  and  hurry  to  the  farmhouse, — a  maimed  rite, 
indeed,  but  of  interest  when  compared  with  kindred  doings. 
For  the  words  are  surely  wreckage  of  an  old  refrain,  full  of 
repetitions,  like  that  song  Montanus  rescued  from  the  rites 
of  midsummer-eve  along  the  Rhine.  Under  the  "crown," 
boys,  girls,  and  their  elders  dance  in  a  ring  and  sing  as  they 
dance  a  sort  of  refrain  which  is  made  of  incremental  repeti- 

^  Perhaps  "we  end,"  as  Brand  suggests;  but  perhaps  and  probably  not.  At 
another  place  in  Devonshire  they  cry  "  the  knack,"  and  a  rime  is  repeated :  — 

Well  cut,  well  bound, 

Well  shocked,  well  saved  from  the  ground. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        297 

tions  into  a  description  of  the  game  they  are  playing ;  mean- 
time one  person  stands  in  the  midst  of  the  ring  until  he  has 
played  his  part  to  the  choral  suggestion,  a  common  element 
in  other  games  of  children.  In  these  and  kindred  ceremonies 
it  is  clear  that  a  concerted  shouting  was  the  main  feature, 
but  the  shouts  were  rhythmical  and  went  with  the  communal 
dance,  not  with  a  disintegrated,  howling  mob.  At  Hitchin 
farmers  drove  furiously  home  with  the  last  load  of  harvest, 
while  the  people  rushed  madly  after,  shouting  and  dashing 
bowls  of  water  on  the  corn  ;  but  this  is  chaotic,  for  old  Tusser  ^ 
knew  a  better  way :  — 

Come  home  lord  singing, 
Come  home  corn  bringing. 

In  Germany  the  last  load  of  grain  is  brought  home  with 
throwing  of  water  and  singing  of  traditional  songs  and  shouts 
for  the  master.  So  too  in  English  "  youling,"  when  cider  is 
thrown  on  the  apple  trees,  at  each  cup  "the  company  sets  up  a 
shout." ^  Doubtless  the  elaborate  chorus  of  the  Arval  broth- 
ers had  once  its  wild  but  cadenced  shout  of  the  whole  festal 
throng,  as  they  "beat  the  ground"  in  communal  consent  of 
voice  and  step ;  and  this  primitive  shout  recurs  in  all  folk- 
song, not  only  in  the  scJinaderhupfl,  in  the  jodel  which  ends 
a  stanza,  but  in  those  cries  at  the  dance  which  have  crept 
into  the  ballad  itself.  But  the  cadenced  shout,  the  refrain, 
the  infinite  repetition  of  a  traditional  song,  pass  with  the 
dance  that  timed  them,  and  decorous  reapers  may  now  de- 
pute one  of  their  number  to  act  as  spokesman  ;  hence,  as  in 

^  Five  Hundred  Points  of  Husbandry,  Eng.  Dial.  Soc,  1878,  p.  126,  under 
August.  Hentzner  noted  the  shouting  of  the  people  in  the  cart.  See  Furnivall's 
Harrison,  Descrip.  Eng.,  p.  Ixxxiv.  A  curious  custom  of  the  largess-shilling  in 
Suffolk  is  described  by  Major  Moor,  note  to  Tusser,  p.  294.  The  reapers  answer 
their  leader's  "  Holla  Lar !  Holla  Lar !  Holla  Lar  !  — jees,"  with  "  0-0-0-0-,"  head 
inclined,  and  then,  throwing  the  head  up,  vociferate  "a-a-a-ah."  This  is  thrice 
done  by  harvesters  for  a  shilling. 

2  Brand-Ellis,  "Twelfth  Day." 


298  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Mecklenburg,  the  recited  poem,  or  the  Httle  speech,  or  even, 
as  in  Hanover,  a  figure  made  of  the  stalks  is  furnished  with 
a  letter  to  be  read  aloud  for  the  behoof  of  neighbours ;  and 
there  are  other  infamies  of  the  sort.  So  passes  the  old  Har- 
vest-home. 

Of  vast  importance  for  agricultural  life,  and  resonant  with 
refrain  and  song,  were  those  processions  about  the  field,  about 
parish  boundaries,  to  sacred  wells,^  to  woods  and  groves  to 
bring  in  the  May,  and  for  a  hundred  other  purposes  to  a 
hundred  other  resorts.  The  solemn  procession  of  a  commu- 
nity, along  with  the  festal  dance,  forms  the  oldest  known 
source  of  poetry;  and  Kogel  points  out  that  in  German  even 
now  the  proper  word  for  celebrating  a  festal  occasion  is  bege- 
hen,  while  the  corresponding  noun  is  used  in  a  mediaeval  gloss 
for  ritiis  and  ciiltits.  The  song  of  the  Arval  brothers  had  its 
origin  in  such  a  procession  about  the  fields ;  and  Vergil's 
advice  2  to  the  farmer  shows  that  this  rite  was  no  monopoly 
of  priests,  or  even  of  the  man  skilled  in  incantations,  but  a 
communal  affair,  —  marching  round  the  young  crops,  and 
dance  and  song  at  harvest :  — 

,  ...  thrice  for  luck 

Around  the  young  corn  let  the  victim  go, 
And  all  the  choir,  a  joyful  company, 
Attend  it,  and  with  shouts  bid  Ceres  come 
To  be  their  house-mate  ;  and  let  no  man  dare 
Put  sickle  to  the  ripened  ears  until, 
With  woven  oak  his  temples  chapleted, 
He  foot  the  rugged  dance  and  chant  the  lay.* 

1  See  Uhland,  Kl.  Schr.,  III.  389  f.,  and  note,  with  references,  467  f.,  for  the 
"  bornfart,"  "  bronnefart,"  with  "  dantzen,  rennen,  springen,  jagen,"  closely  con- 
nected with  the  May  feasts.  On  the  whole  subject  of  processions,  see  Pfannen- 
schmid's  second  chapter  along  with  his  notes,  pp.  342  ff. 

■^  Georg.,  I.  343  ff. 

'  Translation  of  J.  Rhoades.  The  last  line  —  *det  motus  incompositos  et  car- 
mina  dicat'  —  is  suggestive  :  "  spontaneous  gestures  and  steps,  with  song,"  empha- 
size a  purely  communal  dance  as  compared  v/ith  the  ritual  of  the  Brothers. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        299 

There  can  be  no  question  of  borrowing  in  these  songs  and 
dances,  even  in  the  simpler  forms  of  ritual,  which  are  found 
wherever  rudest  agriculture  has  begun.  Doubtless  only  a 
change  of  religion  deprives  us  of  those  songs,  or  some  echo 
of  them,  which  were  sung  in  the  famous  procession  of  Ner- 
thus,^  the  terra  mater,  goddess  of  fertility  and  peace  among 
the  Germanic  tribes  who  lived  by  the  northern  oceans  two 
thousand  years  ago.  These  people,  so  Tacitus^  records  the 
rite,  "  believe  that  she  enters  into  human  activity,  and  travels 
among  them."  Drawn  by  cows,  she  is  accompanied  in  her 
mysterious  wagon  by  a  priest ;  "  those  are  joyful  times  and 
places  which  the  goddess  honours  with  her  presence,  and  her 
visit  makes  holiday."^ 

Tacitus  was  interested  in  the  mysteries  of  the  rite ;  would 
that  he  had  heard  and  transmitted  the  songs  that  rang  out  in 
honour  of  this  German  Demeter,  and  had  described  the  dances 
of  the  folk  about  their  fields  !  *  For,  as  Kogel  points  out,  the 
later  procession  to  bless  crops  and  to  ban  all  things  hostile  to 

TibuUus,  by  the  way,  has  the  Lares,  not  Ceres,  in  mind  for  the  dance  and  song  of 
his  rustics:  Eleg.,  \.  i,  23  f. 

Agna  cadet  vobis,  quam  circum  rustica  pubes 
Clamet :   lo  !  A/esses  et  bona  vina  date  ! 

1  A  "  queen,"  accompanied  by  a  guard  of  brothers  and  young  folk  generally, 
goes  on  Whitsuntide  in  Servia  from  farm  to  farm;  at  each  she  stops  and  her  com- 
panions form  a  circle  {kolo~)  and  sing  their  songs.  Each  line  is  thrice  repeated, 
and  then  follows  the  refrain  Leljo  !  Then  the  dancers  hold  one  another  by  the 
belt  and  dance  in  a  half-circle,  led  by  an  exarch.  Between  the  songs  any  ready 
young  man  cries  out  a  lusty  phrase  or  two,  or  makes  a  verse,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  German  schnaderhupfi.  See  A.  W.  Grube,  Deutsche  Volkslieder,  Iserlohn, 
1866,  pp.  132  f. 

2  Germania,  xl. 

*  The  procession  of  the  Phrygian  goddess,  the  magna  deum  mater  materque 
ferarum  et  nostri  genetrix,  described  by  Lucretius  in  often-quoted  lines,  I\er. 
Nat.,  IL  598  ff.,  with  its  Dionysian  features,  cannot  be  discussed  here;  Germanic 
and  modern  examples  must  suffice. 

*  It  is  a  commonplace  in  sociology  that  agricultural  communities  worship  female 
deities  as  representatives  of  fertility,  while  the  god  like  Tiw  or  Woden  springs 
from  warlike  and  nomadic  conditions. 


300  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

their  thriving,  a  custom  still  common  in  certain  parts  of  Eu- 
rope, is  only  a  repetition  of  this  old  progress.  Half-way 
between  the  time  of  Nerthus  and  the  present  occurs  that 
Anglo-Saxon  charm  for  making  barren  or  bewitched  land 
bear  fruit ;  amid  its  excrescences  of  ritual,  and  under  the 
alien  matter,  still  lingers  a  hint  of  the  old  communal  proces- 
sion, the  old  communal  song  and  dance ;  and  perhaps  Ner- 
thus is  dimly  remembered  in  the  cries  of,  — 

Erce,  Erce,  Erce,  earth's  mother, 

which  has  a  repetition  familiar  from  many  survivals,*  and  in 

the  lines: —        t,  •,       ,       t-     ,     „ 

Hail  to  thee,  Earth,  all  men's  mother, 

Be  thou  growing  in  God's  protection, 

Filled  with  food  for  feeding  of  men  ! 

Again,  one  has  the  extremes  of  shouts,  communal  cadenced 
cries,  and  songs  which  are  often  quite  irrelevant ;  thus  in 
Brandenburg  on  Easter  Monday  girls  march  by  long  rows, 
hand  in  hand,  over  the  young  corn  of  each  field,  singing  Easter 
songs,  while  the  young  men  ring  the  church  bells ;  ^  but  one 
learns  that  Wends  of  the  fifteenth  century  greeted  the  early 
corn  as  they  ran  round  it  in  wild  procession,  and  hailed  it 
"with  loud  shouting."^ 

About  the  year  1133,  and  along  the  lower  Rhine,  a  proces- 
sion was  in  vogue  which  may  have  been  a  survival  of  the 

*  For  example,  the  rain-song  in  Servia,  an  interesting  ceremony,  full  of  cries 
and  with  a  refrain  sung  by  dancing  maidens.  The  dodola,  a  girl  otherwise  naked, 
but  entirely  covered  with  grass,  weeds,  and  flowers,  goes  with  a  retinue  of  maidens 
from  house  to  house;  before  each  house  the  girls  form  a  dancing  ring  with  the 
dodola  in  the  middle.  The  woman  of  the  house  pours  water  over  the  dodola,  while 
she  dances  and  turns  about;  the  other  maidens  now  sing  the  song  for  rain,  each 
line  ending  with  the  refrain,  oj  dodo  oj  dodo  le  !  See  Grimm,  Mythologie  ^,  p.  494. 
Similar  customs  prevail  in  Greece;  the  song  is  here  full  of  repetitions.  See 
Grimm,  Kl.  Schr.,  II.  447.  In  the  Aikenaufn,  No.  2857  (1882),  G.  L.  Gomme 
has  some  interesting  notes  on  a  survival  of  these  processional  rites. 

2  E.  H.  Meyer,  p.  223. 

3  Grimm,  Mythol.,'-  I.  52. 


THE,  DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        301 

worship  of  that  goddess  recorded  by  Tacitus  and  called  I  sis 
because  her  symbol  was  a  ship ;  for  in  the  mediaeval  rite  such 
a  ship  was  placed  on  wheels  and  carried  about  the  country, 
followed  by  shouting  bands  and  hailed  at  every  halt  with 
song  and  dance. ^  The  songs,  tiirpia  cantica  et  religioiii  Chris- 
tianae  indigna  concinentuim,  were  condemned  by  clericals,^ 
and  the  dances  of  scantily  clad  women,  not  unhke  the  festal 
dances  of  savage  women  in  many  places  at  this  season  of  the 
year,  were  doubtless  not  only  intrinsically  objectionable,  but 
pointed  back  to  the  heathen  doings  from  which  our  Germanic 
folk  were  so  slowly  converted.  A  glimpse  at  this  older  wor- 
ship is  given  by  Gregory  in  his  often-quoted  story  of  the 
Langobards  who  offered  a  goat's  head  to  their  "  devil,"  run- 
ning about  in  a  circle  and  singing  impious  songs.^  A  sur- 
vival of  some  such  heathen  rite,  with  ridiculous  perversion  of 
Christian  legend,  is  the  feast  of  the  ass,  the  festival  of  fools, 
on  Christmas  or  on  St.  Stephen's  day,  when  during  mass 
the  priest  brays  thrice  and  the  congregation  respond  in  kind ; 
here  and  there,  as  in  France,  a  hymn  is  sung,  with  refrain 

from  the  throng  :  *  — 

Hez,  Sir  Ane,  hez  !  — 

and  ending  in  what  Hampson  oddly  calls  "  an  imitation  of 
the  noisy  Bacchanalian  cry  of  Evoke  .^  "  — 

^  References  ibid.,  I.  214  ff.,  with  similar  cases.     See  also  IIL  86  f. 

2  William  of  Malmesbury  tells  a  story  to  show  that  the  church  could  do  better 
than  condemn.  In  1012  fifteen  young  men  and  women  were  dancing  and  singing 
in  a  churchyard  and  disturbed  Robert  the  priest.  He  prayed  at  them,  and  for  a 
whole  year  they  had  to  dance  and  sing  without  ceasing  until  they  sank  to  the 
middle  in  the  earth. 

^  Gregor.  M.  Dial.,  IH.  28,  quoted  by  W.  Miiller,  Geschichte  und  System  der 
altdeutschen  Religion,  Gottingen,  1844,  PP-  74  f-  The  first  book  of  this  excellent 
treatise  is  even  now  the  best  summary  of  old  Germanic  rites,  —  clear,  compact, 
and  with  all  necessary  references.  For  the  boar's  head  and  the  famous  Latin  song, 
at  Oxford,  see  Grimm,  Mytkol.*,  p.  178;  for  the  vows,  Grimm,  Rechtsalterthiimer, 
pp.  900  f. 

*  From  Du  Cange,  s.v.  Kalendae.     See  too  Hampson,  Med.  ^v.  Kal.,  1. 140  ff. 


302  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Hez  va  !  Hez  va  !  Hez-va-he  ! 
Bialz,  Sire  Asnes,  carallez 
Belle  bouche  car  chantez,  — 

a  very  far  cry,  indeed.  After  service,  crowds  marched 
through  the  streets,  sang  Fescennine  songs,  danced,  and 
ended  by  "  dashing  pails  of  water  over  the  precentor's 
head."  It  is  needless  to  follow  this  degenerate  choral  over 
Europe,  as  it  blends  thus  with  rites  of  the  church,  passes  into 
the  song  of  the  waits,  and  lingers  in  degraded  form  with  the 
beggars  or  children  who  parade  the  countryside  at  Martin- 
mas or  in  Christmas  week,  singing  refrains  that  echo  older 
and  better  song  and  doggerel  that  echoes  nothing. 

A  soule-cake,  a  soule-cake, 
was  the  refrain  which  Aubrey  heard ;  but  in  modern  Chesh- 
ire it  is  — 

A  soul !     A  soul !     A  soul-cake  ! 

Please  good  Missis,  a  soul-cake  !  ^ 

printed  here  with  full  apologies  to  all  outraged  friends  of  the 
immensities  and  the  eternities,  who  sought  nobler  stuff  in  a 
book  on  the  beginnings  of  poetry.  On  Palm  Sunday,  near 
Bielefeld  in  Germany,  the  children  go  about  with  branches 
of  willow  and  sing  "  all  day  long  "  — 

Palm'n,  Palni'n,  PSsken, 
Lat't  den  Kukkuk  krasken, 
Lat't  del  Viogel  singen, 
Lat't  den  Kukkuk  springen  I^ 

Most  stubborn,  of  course,  is  this  converted  or  Christian  sur- 
vival, and  almost  as  stubborn  the  custom  of  the  village  and 

1  Broadwood  and  Maitland,  p.  30.  Survivals  of  procession  song  (^Ansingelieder) 
are  printed  by  Bohme,  Kinderlicd,  pp.  331  ft.  The  refrain  has  some  body  in  a 
song  "  't  Godsdeel  of  den  Rommelpot,"  printed  by  Coussemaker,  Chants  Pop. 
des  Flatnands,  p.  95,  and  also  found  in  different  parts  of  Germany.  The  begging 
songs  for  Martinmas  Eve,  found  in  Flanders,  are  widespread  in  Germany;  Fir- 
menich,  work  quoted,  prints  a  good  dozen  and  more  from  different  places.  The 
steps  of  dance  and  march  are  best  heard  in  his  version  from  Oldenburg,  I.  231. 

2  Firmenich,  I.  281. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        303 

of  remote  agricultural  communities ;  such  a  procession  as 
Coussemaker  ^  describes,  popular  throughout  Flanders  and 
Brabant,  with  a  fixed  refrain,  held  its  place  even  in  the  cities. 
Occasionally  Church  and  State  were  opposed ;  ^  a  proclama- 
tion of  Henry  VIII  forbade  processions  "with  songes  and 
dances  from  house  to  house,"  and  even  carols  were  forbidden 
by  act  of  Parliament  in  Scotland.  Wakes  ^  were  either  abol- 
ished, or  else  passed  into  that  curious  communal  revival,  the 
love-feast  and  the  watch-meeting  of  Methodists.  But  the 
communal  song  and  procession  are  fast  dying  out,  and 
the  new  century  will  hear  little  of  them ;  although  early  in 
the  old  century  the  Christmas  days  *  heard  many  a  shouting 
throng,  now  with  cries  of  au  guy,  now  gict  heil,  now  Jwgme- 
nay  trololay,  give  us  your  tvJiite  bread  and  nofie  of  your  gray  I 

^  Reuzelied,  pp.  1 39  fif. :  — 

Als  de  groote  Klokke  luyd 

De  Reuze  komt  uyt. 

Keere  u  e's  om,  de  Reuze,  de  Reuze, 

Keere  u  e's  om, 

Reuzekom. 

That  is,  "  When  the  big  bell  sounds,  Reuze  (giant?)  comes  out.  Turn  back^ 
Reuze,  Reuze,  turn  back,  good  Reuze."  The  text  is  corrupt,  and  Reuze  is  not  easy 
to  explain;  but  one  need  not  appeal  with  Coussemaker  to  the  Scandinavians  to 
establish  the  antiquity  of  this  procession  and  this  refrain. 

2  Hampson,  I.  61. 

^  For  a  good  description  of  wakes,  see  Brand-Ellis,  and  Song  27  of  Drayton's 
Polyolbion,  where  such  cheering  is  recorded  of  the  villages  — 

That  one  high  hill  was  heard  to  tell  it  to  his  brother. 
That  instantly  again  to  tell  it  to  some  other. 

*  Besides  T.  Wright's  Songs  and  Carols,  Percy  Soc,  1847,  see  W.  Sandy's 
CJwistmas  Carols,  Ancient  and  Modern,  London,  1833,  with  a  long  introduction, 
and  the  same  editor's  Festive  Songs,  Percy  Soc,  1848.  Sandys  {Carols)  gives  the 
cries  or  refrains  of  many  Christmas  songs :  — 

Nowell,  nowell,  nowell,  nowell,  — 

No  —  el,  el,  el,  el,  el,  el,  el,  el,  el,  el,  — 

Noel,  Noel  — 

&  moult  gram  cris,  the  familiar  refrain  in  France. 


304  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

and  whatever  other  etymological  puzzles  the  scanty  records 
can  show.  These  fragments  of  festal  song  are  too  far 
gone  in  corruption  for  profitable  use.  Aubrey  ^  felt  the  lapse, 
and  made  such  memoranda  as  these :  "  get  the  Christmas 
caroll  and  the  wasselling  song ;  "  "  get  the  song  which  is 
sung  in  the  ox-house  when  they  wassell  the  oxen,"  that  is, 
with  echo  of  an  old  refrain,  where  they  drink  "  to  the  ox  with 
the  crumpled  home  that  treads  out  the  corne  "  ;  and  he  has 
noted  a  few  of  these  songs.  The  civil  wars,  he  thinks,  made 
an  end  of  these  old  customs  ;  "  warres  doe  not  only  extin- 
guish Religion  and  Lawes,  but  Superstition  ;  and  no  suffimen 
is  a  greater  fugator  of  Phantosmes  than  gunpowder."  But 
peace  has  its  victories  of  this  sort.  Not  long  ago  the  pro- 
cession about  village  and  parish  boundaries  was  common 
enough ;  the  whole  community  took  part  in  this  festal  affair, 
and  all  sense  as  of  an  individual  purpose  or  individual  owner- 
ship was  laid  aside.  Shout,  dance,  song,  banquet,  even  directly 
ceremonial  acts,  were  the  concern  of  a  homogeneous  throng, 
"  our  village  "  in  strictest  communal  sense.  On  the  march 
—  for  example,  the  boundary  march  at  Hamelin,  in  the  late 
autumn,  —  rose  traditional  songs,  varied  by  noise  of  every 
sort ;  and  at  the  feast  which  followed,  gentle  and  simple 
joined  hands  in  the  dance,  until,  with  recent  innovations,  the 
gentry  withdrew,  became  mere  onlookers,  and  at  last  left  the 
old  rite  to  fall,  like  most  communal  traditions,  into  a  shabby, 
vulgar,  discredited  uproar  of  the  lower  classes,  a  thing  com- 
mon and  unclean.  A  quite  similar  case  of  degeneration  is 
quoted  by  Brand  from  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  June, 

1  Remaines  Genlil.,  pp.  9,  21,  23,  26,  31,  36,  40,  161,  180.  ''Little  children," 
he  says  here,  "  have  a  custome  when  it  raines  to  sing  or  charme  away  the  Raine; 
thus  they  all  joine  in  a  Chorus,  and  sing  thus,  viz. :  — 

Raine,  raine,  goe  away, 
Come  againe  a  Saterday. 

I  have  a  conceit  that  this  childish  custome  is  of  great  antiquity." 


THE    DIFFERENCING    COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         305 

1790,  as  going  on  at  Helstone  in  Cornwall.^  But  where  the 
prosperity  of  crop  and  barn  is  in  question,  the  rites  are  more 
stubborn  and  hold  their  ground.  This  Helstone  song  wel- 
comes summer;  but  before  that  was  sung,  processions  of 
all  kinds  were  wont  to  go  about  the  fields,  and  in  1868  what 
the  Times  newspaper  called  a  "  ritualistic  revival "  came  off 
in  Lancashire,  priest  and  choir  making  a  progress  through 
the  fields  with  cross  and  banners,  and  singing  as  they  went. 
Rogation  week  is  still  known  as  gang-week.^  In  older  times 
the  community  itself  was  priest  and  choir ;  the  cases  are 
plentiful  and  may  be  read  in  Brand's  account  of  "  parochial 
perambulations."  Then  there  is  the  song  of  bringing  home 
the  May,^  the  dance  and  song  about  the  Maypole,  with  mate- 
rial and  survival  beyond  one's  compass ;  enough  to  let  them 
echo  in  the  verses  put  by  Nash  into  his  chaotic  but  pretty 
play,  where  the  clowns  and  maids  sing  as  they  dance :  — 

Trip  and  goe,  heave  and  hoe, 
Up  and  down,  to  and  fro ; 
From  the  town  to  the  grove 
Two  and  two  let  us  rove. 
A-maying,  a-playing  : 
Love  hath  no  gainsaying  ; 
So  merrily  trip  and  go.* 

1  See  the  Helstone  Furry-Day  Song,  Bell,  Ancient  Poems,  pp.  167  f.,  with  a 
refrain  of  some  value. 

2  Also  cross-week  and  grass-week.  See  Dyer,  British  Popular  Customs, 
pp.  204  ff.,  for  a  sympathetic  account  of  the  customs  still  lingering  in  England. 

2  The  standard  description  of  English  May-games,  of  course  hostile,  is  that  of 
Stubbes  in  his  Anatomic  of  Abuses,  ed.  New  Shaks.  Soc,  p.  149.  See  also  the 
diatribe  in  John  Northbrooke's  Treatise  wherein  Dicing,  Dancing  .  .  .  are 
Reprooved.  London,  1579.  He  leans  to  Chrysostom's  view  (that  is,  Age  takes 
this  side  against  Youth,  in  the  dialogue)  that  dancing  "came  firste  from  the 
Diuell";  and  p.  68''  (only  one  page  of  the  leaf  is  numbered)  he  describes  the 
May. 

*  Compare  the  chorus  of  the  Maypole  song  in  Actceon  and  Diana,  in  Chappell, 
L  -.26:  — 

Then  to  the  Maypole  come  away, 
For  it  is  now  a  holiday. 
X 


3o6  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY 

The  voices  of  the  real  maying  folk  are  here,  and  the  steps, 

Hghtly  touched  by  art  in  the  transfer  to  the   play ;  in  that 

Furry-Day  Song  at  Helstone,  with  its  opening  about  Robin 

Hood  and  Little  John,  there  is  a  rougher  but  less  effective 

refrain :  —        „^. ,  ,    ,  , ,    ^  , 

With  ha-lau-tow,  rumble  O  ! 

For  we  were  up  as  soon  as  any  day  O  ! 

And  for  to  fetch  the  summer  home,^ 

The  summer  and  the  May  O  ! 

For  summer  is  a-come  O  ! 

And  winter  is  a-gone  O  ! 

What  the  poet  can  do  with  a  fragment  of  communal  song,  with 
a  heart  full  of  communal  sympathy,  and  with  that  final  touch 
of  art  and  individual  reflection,  may  be  felt  by  any  one  who 
will  read  in  the  echo  of  this  rough  old  chorus  those  exquisite 
verses  of  Herrick  to  Corinna. 

Songs  that  may  pass  as  communal  drama  hold  something 
of  this  old  refrain  of  labour ;  so,  for  example,  in  the  flytings 
of  winter  with  summer  or  with  spring,^  which  seem  to  go  back 
in  England  to  times  before  the  conquest.  A  refrain,  with 
change  of  "summer"  to  "winter"  in  alternate  stanzas,  runs 
through  a  ballad  printed  by  Uhland  :^  — 

"  Trip  and  go  "  was  "  one  of  the  favourite  Morris-dances,"  and  the  words  seem  to 
have  become  a  proverbial  expression.  See  Chappell,  I.  126,  302.  It  was  on  the 
basis  of  some  refrain  of  this  sort  that  the  first  part-song  in  English,  the  famous 
Cuckoo  Song,  was  built  up.  Ten  Brink  is  surely  right  in  giving  it  a  communal 
origin,  though  not  communal  making. 

1  "  V^e  have  brought  the  summer  home,"  is  the  spirit  of  all  the  May  refrains, 
as  the  young  folk  come  back  with  flowers  and  boughs.     See  Brand,  "  Maypoles." 

2  Still  in  vogue  in  some  parts  of  Germany.     See  E.  H.  Meyer,  p.  256. 

<*  Volkslieder,  I.  23.     For  the  whole  subject,  see  Uhland's  Abhandlung  ilber  die 
deutschen  Volkslieder,  pp.  17  ff.     Suspicion  has  been  expressed  that  these  flytings 
are  a  late  echo  of  the  Vergilian  eclogue  through  such  a  transmitting  element  as  the 
mediaeval  Confiictus  Veris  et  fliemis  and  the  song  to  the  cuckoo :  — 
Salve,  dulce  decus  cuculus  per  saecula,  salve! 

Comparison  of  the  fragments,  however,  shows  this  suspicion  to  be  groundless,  and 
it  is  thoroughly  discredited  by  Uhland,  Kl.  ScAr.,  III.  24.  See  also  Ebert,  Christ. 
Lat.  Lit.,  11.  69. 


THE   DIFFERENCLNG   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        307 

Alle  ir  herren  mein, 
Der  Sommer  ist  fein  ! 

Another  refrain  is  sung  "  by  all  the  youth,"  when  a  mock 
fight   between   the  two  is  ended,  and  winter  lies  at  jocund 

summer's  feet :  — 

Stab  aus,  stab  aus, 

Stecht  dem  Winter  die  Augen  aus  ! 

In  the  strife  by  deputy,^  owl  appearing  for  Hiems,  and 
cuckoo  for  Ver,  there  is  the  call  of  the  bird  for  refrain  ;  or  else 
it  is  holly  for  summer  and  ivy  for  winter,  a  chorus,^  said  to 
have  been  written  down  in  Henry  VI's  time,  running  — 

Nay,  Ivy.  nay, 

Hyt  shal  not  be,  iwys ; 
Let  Holy  hafe  the  maystry 

As  the  maner  ys.^ 

These  flytings  came  to  be  extraordinarily  popular,  and  it  is 
hard  to  draw  a  line  between  the  volkspoesie  and  the  volks- 
thiimliche  ;  learned  allegory,  which  was  early  on  the  ground, 
has  the  mark  of  Cain  upon  it,  and  cannot  be  missed.  Prob- 
ably Bocken  is  right  in  looking  on  the  winter  and  summer 
songs  as  originally  communal,  with  those  dialogues  between 
soul  and  body,  which  one  finds  in  nearly  every  literature  of 
Europe,  as  a  learned  and  allegorical  imitation ;  a  combination 
of  the  two  kinds  is  not  unusual.^     So  one  passes  to  all  man- 

^  Love's  Labour^s  Lost,  V.  2. 

2  Ritson,  Ancient  Songs,  3d  ed.,  pp.  113  ff.  The  text  is  a  sort  of  dramatic 
description.  See  also  T.  Wright,  Songs  and  Carols  ;  and  Brand,  under  "  Morris 
Dancers."  The  refrains  are  unfortunately  seldom  recorded,  but  they  are  the 
foundation  of  the  little  drama. 

^  Used  as  refrain  in  ballads;  see  Child,  I.  19  f.,  eg. :  — 
Sing  ivy,  sing  ivy  .  .  . 
Sing  holly,  go  whistle,  and  ivy  .  .  . 
Sing  green  bush,  holly,  and  ivy. 

♦  Deutsche  Volkslieder  aus  Oberhessen,  p.  xi.     His  list  of  references  is  valuable. 

^  At  a  harvest-home  at  Selborne,  1836,  Bell  (pp.  46  ff.)  heard  two  countrymen 
recite  a  "Dialogue  between  the  Husbandman  and  the  Servingman";  "it  was 
delivered  in  a  sort  of  chant  or  recitative,"  though  the  rhythm  is  good  for  such 


308  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

ner  of  debates,^  —  riches  and  poverty,  wine  and  water,  peas- 
ant and  noble,  priest  and  knight,  down  to  Burns' s  Twa  Dogs ; 
but  it  is  the  old  communal  sap  that  keeps  holly  and  ivy 
green,  and  an  old  communal  rite,  the  driving  out  of  winter 
or  of  death,  lingers  in  the  verses  which  German  children  still 
sing  to  the  dance  :  ^  — 

Weir  alle,  weir  alle,  weir  kumma  raus, 
Weir  brenge  enk'n  Tod  hinaus  ; 
Der  Summa  is  wieder  kumme, 
Willkummen,  lieber  Summe  !  ^ 

Refrain  and  chorus  of  labour  among  savages  have  been 
noted  here  and  there  in  the  foregoing  pages  ;  to  collect  them 
to  any  extent  would  be  useless.  They  are  found  everywhere, 
and  show  that  stage  of  development  at  which  the  repetition  of 
a  single  sentence,  often  of  a  single  word,  affords  unmeasured 
delight  or  ease.  Individual  singing  is  almost  unknown  in 
many  savage  tribes,*  and  the  refrain  in  its  function  as  deputy  of 
the  older  chorus,  is  less  common  than  the  chorus  itself.^ 
Where  the  savage  is  still  mainly  a  hunter,  mainly  a  warrior, 
the  refrain  is  insistent  whenever  a  connected  bit  of  descrip- 

doggerel;  what  suggests  the  older  refrain  is  that  the  rime  (second  and  fourth 
lines  of  each  stanza)  has  to  be  either  with  "  husbandman  "  or  with  "servingman" 
throughout.     The  odd  lines  have  interior  rime. 

^  See  Jeanroy's  chapter,  "  Le  Debat,"  in  Origines  de  la  Poesie  Lyrique  en 
France,  pp.  45  fif. 

2  Bohme,  Kinderlied,  pp.  332  ff.     See  p.  347. 

8  See  Firmenich,  II.  15,  where  children  in  the  Palatinate  on  "Rose-Sunday" 

go  about  and  sing: —  „. 

•»  ^^  Ri,  ra,  ro 

Der  Summertaagk  iss  do  ! 
See  ibid.,  II.  34. 

*  Letourneau,  L  Evolution  Litter  aire,  p.  21. 

^  "  Choruses  are  about  all  the  Indians  sing.  They  have  probably  four  or  five 
words,  then  the  chorus.  'They  have  brought  us  a  fat  dog';  then  the  chorus  goes 
on  for  half  a  minute;  then  a  repetition  again  of  the  above  words  'they  have 
brought  us  a  fat  dog.'  .  .  .  Tukensha,  a  rock,  or  grandfather,  is  often  appealed 
to  in  the  choruses  for  aid."  Answer  to  question  about  Indian  poetry  by  Rev.  Mr. 
Fletcher,  who  lived  several  years  with  the  Winnebago  Indians.  He  says,  too, 
"there  are  no  Indian  poets  in  this  country."     Schoolcraft,  IV.  71. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         309 

tion  breaks  away  from  the  choral  song,  as  if  artistic  poetry 
could  not  yet  walk  by  itself ;  and  where  he  has  begun  to  till 
the  soil,  or  even  merely  to  gather  plants  and  fruits,  there 
is  the  chorus  and  there  is  the  refrain  of  a  rude  harvest-home. 
For  the  hunter  and  warrior  we  may  quote  Heckewelder's 
account.^  "  Their  songs  are  by  no  means  inharmonious. 
They  sing  in  chorus ;  first  the  men  and  then  the  women. 
At  times  the  women  join  in  the  general  song,  or  repeat  the 
strain  which  the  men  have  just  finished.  It  seems  like  two 
parties  singing  in  questions  and  answers,  and  is  upon  the 
whole  very  agreeable  and  enlivening.  .  .  .  The  singing 
always  begins  by  one  person  only,  but  others  soon  fall  in 
successively,  until  the  general  chorus  begins,  the  drum  beat- 
ing all  the  while  to  mark  the  time."  Their  war-dance  is 
described  in  the  familiar  terms ;  but  Heckewelder  adds  a 
more  interesting  account  of  the  feast  which  under  agricultural 
conditions  would  be  a  harvest-home.  "  After  returning  from 
a  successful  expedition,"  he  says,  "a  dance  of  thanksgiving 
is  always  performed.  ...  It  is  accompanied  with  singing 
and  choruses,  in  which  the  women  join.  ...  At  the  end  of 
every  song,  the  scalp-yell  is  shouted  as  many  times  as  there 
have  been  scalps  taken  from  the  enemy."  As  to  the  rhythm, 
Heckewelder  makes  a  statement  much  clearer  than  the 
accounts  given  in  Schoolcraft's  question  and  answer,  for 
he  does  not  undertake  to  express  Indian  metres  in  terms  of 
civilized  poetry,  but  simply  says  that  "  their  songs  .  .  .  are 
sung  in  short  sentences,  not  without  some  kind  of  measure 
harmonious  to  an  Indian  ear." 

These  Indians,  however,  were  not  in  the  absolutely  primi- 
tive stage,  and  the  artist  had  elaborated  dance,  speech,  song ; 
in  short,  like  European  peasants  of  isolated  communities  a 

1  "  Account  of  the  History,  Manners,  and  Customs  of  the  Indian  Nations  who 
once  Inhabited  Pennsylvania  and  the  Neighbouring  States,"  Trausaci.  Avier. 
Philos.  Soc,  1819,  pp.  200  ff. 


310  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

century  ago,  the  redskin  was  at  that  point  of  poetical  devel- 
opment where  improvisation  is  a  general  gift,  and  every  one 
is  expected  to  compose  his  bit  of  song,  leaning,  of  course, 
on  the  chorus,  on  refrain  and  repetition,  and  on  those  tradi- 
tional phrases  which  even  more  than  modern  speech  realized 
Schiller's  lines  about  the  poet :  — 

Weil  dir  ein  Vers  gelingt  in  einer  gebildeten  Sprache 

Die  fiir  dich  dichtet  und  denkt,  glaubst  du  schon 

Dichter  zu  sein  ? 

"The  Indians  also  meet,"  says  Heckewelder,  "for  the  pur- 
pose of  recounting  their  warlike  exploits,  which  is  done  in  a 
kind  of  half-singing  or  recitative  .  .  .  the  drum  beating  all 
the  while.  .  .  .  After  each  has  made  a  short  recital  in  his 
turn,  they  begin  again  in  the  same  order,  and  so  continue 
going  the  rounds,  in  a  kind  of  alternate  chaunting,  until 
every  one  has  concluded."  It  is  easy  to  see  that  while  the 
chorus  of  war  is  an  eminently  communal  performance,  ask- 
ing an  exactness  of  consent  which  makes  strongly  for  rhythm 
at  its  best,  the  conditions  of  nomadic  and  belligerent  life  must 
breed  excellent  differences,  set  apart  the  great  warrior,  the 
great  orator,  and  work  in  certain  ways  toward  communal  dis- 
integration and  the  triumph  of  the  artist.  Agricultural  com- 
munities, on  the  other  hand,  foster  the  choral  and  social  side 
of  poetry,  and  discourage  individual  feats.  So  even  with  the 
Indians;  witness  that  "cereal  chorus,"  as  Schoolcraft  calls 
it,^  at  the  corn-husking,  sung  whenever  a  crooked  ear  is 
found  by  one  of  the  maidens  :  — 

Crooked  ear,  crooked  ear,  walker  at  night,  — 

with  additions  and  variations.  This  crooked  ear,  wa-ge-min, 
is  the  symbol  of  a  "thief  in  the  cornfield,"  and  may  have 
some  relationship  with  Mannhardt's  corn-demon.^ 

^  Quoted  above,  p.  255,  from  Indian  Tribes,  V.  563  f. 

2  Die  Korndaemonen,  Berlin,  1868.     See  also  his  Roggenwulf  und Roggenhund, 
Danzig,  1866. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         31 1 

Older  views  of  the  American  savage  show  him  in  the  war- 
like guise,  to  be  sure,  but  with  poetry  overwhelmingly  choral. 
Lafitau,^  who  says  that  commerce  with  the  white  man  has 
materially  changed  the  savage's  customs,  is  determined  to 
paint  him  in  his  unspoiled  state.  During  an  eclipse,  for 
example,  all  the  tribe  dance  in  a  peculiar  manner,  filling  the 
air  with  lugubrious  cries ;  that  rhythm  is  in  them,  though  it 
is  no  song  in  Lafitau's  ear,  is  proved  by  the  dance,  which,  of 
course,  compels  a  rhythm,  and  by  that  picture  of  the  girl 
who  shakes  pebbles  in  a  calabash,  "trying  meanwhile  to 
make  her  rough  voice  accord  with  this  importunate  jingle."^ 
Singing  and  dancing  are  the  chief  features  of  Indian  social 
life,  and  constitute  the  main  charm  of  the  life  to  come ; 
improvised  songs,  even  speeches,  occur,  but  general  singing 
and  dancing  make  the  background  of  their  poetry  and  fill 
their  festivals.^  Everybody  improvises,  and  has  his  special 
song, — a  trait  noted  among  the  Eskimo;  the  dancers  always 
sing,  and  apparently  the  singers  always  dance ;  the  verse  is 
measured,  but  has  no  rime,  and  individual  songs  are  always 
supported  by  an  accompanying  he  !  he  !  in  cadence  from  the 
throng,  a  sort  of  burden.  Dramatic  songs  of  war  are  com- 
mon ;  and  Lafitau  gives  a  case  marvellously  like  that  Faroe 
ballad  of  the  luckless  fisherman,  with  satirist  and  victim  in  full 
view,  although  here  the  latter  is  passive,  and  is  often  forced 
by  the  laughter  and  scorn  of  the  tribe  to  break  away  and  hide 
his  head  in  shame.'*  Song-duels,  too,  as  among  the  Eskimo, 
are  frequent,  with  throwing  of  ashes,  which  makes  Lafitau 
call  on  Athenaeus  for  a  parallel  among  the  ancient  Greeks. 
But,  after  all,  what  sticks  in  Lafitau's  mind  about  Indian 
dances  is  the  fury  of  them  and  that  wild  he !  he !  which 
gave  them  cadence,  but  which  often  "  made  the  whole  village 
tremble  and  shake."  The  war-dance  is  described  in  terms 
familiar  to  the  reader  of  later  accounts. 

1  Work  quoted,  I.  25.  «  Ibid.,  I.  517  ff.;   II.  189  f. 

2  Ibid.,  I.  248.  4  Ibid.,  I.  525. 


312 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 


Lery  gives  an  older  story,  but  in  the  same  spirit  as  that 
found  in  Lafitau.  Of  great  interest  is  the  Huguenot's  account^ 
of  a  festivity  which  he  and  one  Jacques  Rousseau  saw  and  heard 
performed  by  five  or  six  hundred  savages  in  a  certain  village. 
The  men  retired  into  one  house,  the  women  to  another ;  Lery 
and  his  friend  were  shut  in  with  the  women,  about  two  hun- 
dred in  all.  From  the  house  of  the  men  came  a  low  murmur, 
like  that  of  folk  at  prayers ;  and  the  women,  pricking  their 
ears,  huddled  together  in  great  excitement.  Then  the  noise 
grew  in  volume,  and  the  men  could  be  heard  singing  in  con- 
cert, and  often  repeating  their  interjection,  Jic,  he,  Jie,  he  ;  the 
women  now  began  to  reply  in  kind,  crying,  he,  he,  he,  he,  for 
more  than  a  quarter-hour,  leaping,  meanwhile,  and  foaming 
at  the  mouth,  till  it  was  quite  plain  to  Lery  that  the  devil  was 
entering  into  them.  But  this  was  not  all.  From  another 
house  a  mob  of  children  now  tuned  the  hallowed  quire ;  and 
the  Huguenot,  despite  his  year  and  a  half  in  those  parts,  is 
free  to  say  he  felt  a  desire  to  be  "en  nostre  Fort,"  doubting 
the  sequel  of  all  this  coil.  Suddenly  the  women  and  children 
were  quiet ;  and  Lery  could  now  hear  the  men  singing  and 
shouting  '^d'uji  accord  mervcillenx,''  so  that  these  "sweet 
and  more  gracious  sounds "  heartened  him  to  go  near  the 
house  of  the  men.  He  made  a  hole  in  the  soft  wall  and 
looked  in ;  then,  with  two  friends,  he  went  inside,  saw  the 
dance,  and  heard  the  songs,  which  ran  on  without  stop. 
All  the  men  stood  in  a  close  circle,  but  without  clasping 
hands  or  stirring  from  the  place,  bent  forward,  moving 
only  the  leg  and  the  right  foot,  each  having  his  right 
hand  on  his  buttocks,  the  arm  and  left  hand  hanging, 
and  so  danced  and  sang.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  com- 
munal dance,  like  that  of  the  Botocudos,  save  that  certain 
priests  —  caraibes  —  richly  arrayed,  holding  in  their  hands 
"  little  rattles  or  bells  made  of  a  fruit  bigger  than  an  ostrich 

^  Jean  clc  Lery,  Ilistoirc,  etc.,  pp.  268  ff. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        313 

egg,"  had  evidently  extraordinary  powers.  There  is  a  re- 
markable picture  by  way  of  illustration,^  showing  the  naked 
dancer,  bent  over,  as  described,  with  a  priest  behind  him, 
a  parrot  on  a  perch  just  above  the  dancer's  shoulder,  and  a 
monkey  at  his  feet,  —  these  doubtless  an  exuberance  of  the 
artist. 

The  social  foundation,  the  communal  dance,  the  incessant 
refrain,  the  festal  excitement,  are  here  plain  outcome  of 
primitive  conditions  in  survival ;  the  priest,  and  the  ritual  func- 
tions which  are  left  to  one's  guessing,  show  that  mingling  of 
ceremonial  tradition  and  art  which  is  bound  to  spring  up  with 
even  savage  culture.  Despite  this  mingling,  however,  the  over- 
whelming characteristic  of  the  whole  affair  is  communal,  and 
the  songs  are  in  close  tether  to  the  refrain.  An  excellent  sum- 
mary of  American  savage  songs  and  American  savage  poetry  in 
general  has  been  already  quoted  in  part  from  a  paper  by  Dr. 
Brinton,^  and  may  be  used  here  as  a  conclusion  of  the  whole 
matter.  Repetition  is  the  groundwork  of  this  poetry ;  it  is 
always  sung ;  it  has  no  rhythm,  —  no  metre,  that  is,  —  no 
alliteration,  but  depends  on  two  kinds  of  repetition.  Either 
one  verse  is  repeated  indefinitely,  or  a  refrain  is  used.  "The 
refrain  is  usually  inter jectional  and  wholly  meaningless  ;  and 
the  verses  are  often  repeated  without  alteration  four  or  five 
times  ever."  This  is  the  case  with  Eskimo  poetry.  Now  and 
then,  each  Hne  "  is  followed  by  an  inter] ectional  burden."  A 
little  ballad  may  be  quoted  from  Dr.  Brinton's  paper  ^  to  show 
how  events  passed  into  poetry,  without  forming  what  could  be 
called  in  any  sense  narrative  or  epic  verse.  About  the  year 
1820,  the  Pawnees  captured  a  girl  and  put  her  to  the  torture  ; 
but  a  Pawnee  brave,  of  generous  vein,  made  a  daring  rescue  and 
flight.  After  three  days  he  came  back ;  and  as  the  thing 
was  so  mad,  it  was  counted  inspiration,  and  no  one  harmed 
him.     Whereupon  this  song  was  sung  :  — 

^  Opposite  p.  274.  -  See  above,  p.  253.  ^  Qn  pp.  25  ff. 


314  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Well  he  foretold  this, 
Well  he  foretold  this, 
Yes,  he  foretold  this, 

I,  Pitale-Sharu,! 
Am  arrived  here. 
Well  he  foretold  this, 
Yes,  he  foretold  this ; 

I,  Pitale-Sharu,! 
Am  arrived  here, — 

and  in  this  song,  leaning  so  hard  on  the  event,  so  bare  of 
statement,  so  woven  in  with  the  Hfe  of  the  actual  day  that 
lapse  even  of  a  year  or  so  must  have  brought  need  to  its 
hearers  to  be  edified  by  the  margent,^  so  dependent  on  the 
refrain,  so  suggestive  of  an  accompanying  dance  and  of 
gestures  to  make  the  little  drama  real,  it  is  not  unfair  to  say 
that  one  has  at  least  some  of  those  factors  which  went  to 
make  the  beginnings  of  poetry. 

The  refrain  has  been  considered  as  the  main  communal 
element  in  songs  of  labour ;  here  are  its  functions  in  com- 
munal play,  primarily  a  combination  of  consenting  cries  and 
movements  in  the  festal  dance.  The  song  that  always  went 
with  a  dance  got  its  name  thence,  and  was  called  a  ballad ; 
and  in  the  ballad,  whether  strictly  taken  as  a  narrative  song, 
or  as  the  purely  lyrical  outburst  for  which  there  is  no  better 
term  than  folksong,  this  consenting  and  cadenced  series  of 
words  found  its  main  refuge  and  record.  The  subject  is 
complicated  enough,  and  asks  a  volume  to  put  it  into  any 
semblance  of  order ;  all  that  can  be  done  here  is  to  group  the 
main  facts  in  their  relation  to  primitive  poetry.  Unless  one 
holds  fast  to  the  idea  that  refrains  represent  the  original 
choral  song  of  the  mass,  one  begins  to  explain  them  by  their 
modern   features,  and   thus,  while  accurate  as  to  a  certain 

*  The  name  of  the  brave. 

2  One  can  readily  understand  that  Stevenson  heard  his  islanders  sing,  in  chorus 
of  perhaps  a  hundred  persons,  legendary  songs  about  which  not  two  of  these 
singers  coulfl  agree  in  their  translation.     Letters  of  R.  L.  Stevejisoii,  II.  152. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        315 

Stage  of  poetry,  falls  into  error  on  the  historic  and  genetic 
side.  Ferdinand  Wolf  ^  gives  an  admirable  account  of  the 
refrain,  an  admirable  definition,  but  with  a  wrong  inference 
of  origins,  when  he  assigns  it  to  the  participation  of  the  people 
or  of  the  congregation  in  songs  which  were  sung  to  them  by 
one  or  more  persons  on  festal  occasions,  where  the  throng 
repeated  in  chorus  single  words,  verses,  whole  strophes,  or 
else  in  pauses  of  the  main  song  answered  the  singer  with 
a  repeated  shout  to  express  their  agreement,  applause,  horror, 
joy,  or  grief,  —  a  shout  which  often  lost  its  real  meaning  and 
became  a  mere  conventional  choral  cry.  Hence,  says  Wolf, 
it  is  clear  that  the  refrain  is  as  old  as  songs  of  the  people.^  It 
has  been  said  that  this  statement  is  misleading  in  any  genetic 
sense ;  it  fails  to  note  the  growth  of  the  exarch  or  foresinger 
into  the  poet,  and  to  follow  the  backward  curve  of  evolution 
to  a  point  where  the  voice  of  the  foresinger  is  lost  in  the 
voices  of  the  choral  throng  itself,  that  raw  material  from  which 
all  poetry  has  been  made.  On  the  other  hand,  this  definition 
undoubtedly  states  the  facts  of  the  refrain  in  its  mediaeval 
stage  of  survival  from  the  chorus.  In  ballads,  for  example, 
it  is  the  part  taken  by  the  throng  in  distinction  from  the  part 
of  the  minstrel ;  but  there  is  great  difficulty  in  deciding  how 

^  Lais,  p.  18.  Professor  Schipper,  in  his  valuable  treatise  on  Englische  Metrik, 
I.  326  ff.,  follows  Wolf  in  this  definition;  but  in  both  cases  the  analytic  purpose 
excuses  this  neglect  of  the  communal  origin,  and  the  material  presented  allows 
the  student  to  make  his  own  comparisons  and  supply  the  neglected  considerations. 

2  A.  W.  Grube,  Deutsche  Volkslieder,  Iserlohn,  1866,  in  his  sections  "  Der 
Kehrreim  des  Volksliedes,"  pp.  1-103,  and  "Der  Kehrreim  bei  Goethe,  Uhland 
und  Riickert,"  pp.  187-306,  follows  Wolf  in  part,  deriving  refrains  from  the  church 
hymns  (p.  1 12),  but  adds  a  plea  for  the  antiquity  of  folksong,  which  is  "von 
Haus  aus  Chorgesang  "  (p.  183).  So,  too,  on  p.  125,  he  seems  to  view  the  origin 
of  poetry  of  the  people  as  a  statement  of  contemporaneous  events  in  one  sentence 
—  hence  not  "invented" — which  is  sung  by  the  throng.  He  notes  the  increased 
power  of  the  refrain  with  the  preponderance  of  lyric  over  epic  elements :  though 
he  neglects  the  dance  and  communal  conditions  generally.  The  close  connection 
of  Goethe  (as  in  the  Ach  neige,  Du  Schmerzensreicke)  and  of  Riickert  (as  in  the 
beautiful  repetitions  of  Aus  der  Jtigendzeif)  with  popular  poetry,  is  admirably 
treated.     See  pp.  189  ff.,  284  ff. 


3l6  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  throng  actually  sang  the  refrain.  Names  are  no  guide  ; 
and  the  terms,  chorus,  refrain,  and  burden  are  used  in  no 
exclusive  fashion.^  Probably  one  will  not  stray  far  from  facts 
if  one  assumes  that  whenever  a  ballad  came  to  be  sung  artis- 
tically, as  a  part-song  in  the  rough,  the  refrain  —  hey-jto- 
nonjiy,  the  wind  and  the  rain,  or  what  not  —  was  really  a 
burden,  "the  base,  foot,  or  under-song  "  ;^  as  is  proved  by  the 
scene  in  Much  Ado^  where  no  man  is  in  the  group  to  sing 
this  base  or  foot,  and  Margaret,  wishing  a  song  to  which  they 
can  dance,  cries, —  "Clap  us  into  Light  d  Love  ;  that  goes 
without  a  burden  :  do  you  sing  it,  and  I'll  dance  it."  A  pas- 
sage quoted  by  many  writers  from  the  old  play,  TJie  Longer 
thojc  Lives t  the  more  Foole  thou  art,  tells  how  Moros  enters, 
"  synging  the  foote  of  many  songes  "  ;  and  bits  of  them  follow, 
an  interesting  list ;  a  little  later,  three  of  the  characters  are 
to  "  beare  the  foote,"  and  there  is  much  testing  of  the  key. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  Jonson's  Bartholomew  Fair,^  there  is 
the  same  play  of  getting  key  and  tune,  and  Cokes  "  sings 
the  burden  "  with  Nightingale ;  but  this  is  simply  a  couplet 
recurring  at  the  end  of  each  stanza.  So  Guest  ^  defines  the 
burden  as  "  the  return  of  the  same  words  at  the  close  of  each 
stave."  Is  this  right .-"  For  what  one  most  wishes  to  know, 
so  far  as  the  singing  of  ballads  is  concerned,  is  whether  the 
refrain,  constant  or  intermittent,. was  sung  as  the  "  foot,"  that 
is,  contemporaneously  with  the  regular  lines,  or  after  them, 
either  as  couplet  or  in  alternation,  —  as  in  —  ^ 

It  was  a  kniglit  in  Scotland  borne, 
Follow,  my  lone,  come  over  the  stra7id. 

Was  taken  prisoner  and  left  forlorne 

Even  by  the  good  Earle  of  Northianberland. 

^  See  a  note  in  the  author's  Old  English  Ballads,  p.  Ixxxiv. 
2  See  Chappell,  Popular  Music,  I.  222  ff.,  34,  264;   II.  426,  457. 
^  III.  4.      See  also  the  Oxford  Dictionary,  s.v.  "  burden,"  with  the  reference 
to  Shakspere's  l.ucrece,  v.  1133. 

Mil.  I.  6  English  Rhythms,  II.  290.  «  Child,  I.  113. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        317 

Here  the  fitness  of  things  indicates  intermittent  singing  of 
the  refrain  which  thus  makes  a  four-line  stanza  out  of  a  two- 
line  stanza ;  this  is  Rosenberg's  theory  of  the  evolution  of  a 
ballad  strophe.^  Certainly  the  refrain  came  to  be  used  in 
artistic  and  late  communal  poetry  to  mark  off  the  stanza  as 
the  rime  marked  off  the  verse.  What  we  now  call  a  chorus, 
a  recurrent  stanza,  sung  after  each  new  stanza,  is  often  a 
clear  case  in  ballads ;  for  example,  in  The  Twa  Magi- 
cians^ that  provocative  and  tuneful  cadence  of  — 

O  bide,  lady,  bide. 

And  aye  he  bade  her  bide ; 
The  rusty  smith  your  leman  shall  be 

For  a'  your  muckle  pride. 

But  there  is  doubt  in  regard  to  the  refrain  when  it  is  said  to 
be  sung  as  burden,  or  what  Grundtvig  calls  burden-stem ; 
although  there  is  no  doubt  that  refrains  were  taken  from 
folksong  and  chorus  and  were  used  as  burdens  in  the  ballad.^ 
Even  the  song  of  labour  is  used  for  the  refrain  :  * — 

Hey  with  a  gay  and  a  grinding,  O  ! 
distorted  into  — 

Hey  with  the  gay  and  the  grandeur,  O! 

The  question,  as  Professor  Child  acknowledged,  is  extraor- 
dinarily difficult  even  when  narrowed  down  to  ballads.  It 
is  discussed  at  length  in  an  unpublished  dissertation  by  the 
late  Dr.  J.  H.  Boynton,  who  decides  for  the  simultaneous 
singing  of  the  ballad  strophe  and  the  refrain,^  and  incident- 

1  Nordboernes  Aandsliv,  II.  434  ff.;  but  this  evolution  is  stoutly  denied  by 
Steenstrup,  Vore  Folkeviser,  pp.  120  ff.,  in  a  study  of  the  refrain  to  be  considered 
below. 

2  Child,  I.  403 :  printed  after  the  sixth  stanza,  and  so  till  the  eleventh,  when 
the  chorus  is  slightly  changed  to  suit  the  story,  and  kept  so  to  the  end.  For  the 
strophic  refrain  or  chorus  and  its  popularity  in  Old  French,  see  Schipper,  I.  328. 

^  Child,  I.  209,  214. 

*  Ibid.,  I.  126  ff.,  in  F.,  O.     See  H. 

*  Studies  in  the  English  Ballad  Refrain,  with  a  Collection  of  Ballad  and  Early 
Song  Refrains.     Thesis  presented  by  John  Henry  Boynton  in  candidacy  for  the 


3i8  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

ally  for  the  growth  of  a  four-line  strophe  out  of  the  early 
strophe  of  two  lines.  Icelandic  and  Faroe  ballads  show  the 
most  archaic  elements  in  the  Germanic  group,  and  "  a  large 
proportion  of  their  refrains  deal  directly  with  the  dance." 
The  "stem  "  is  sung  iirst  by  the  leader  of  the  dance,  and  is  a 
"  lyric  in  itself,"  fit  to  go  "  with  any  ballad."  Now  it  is  clear 
that  whether  the  ballad  and  the  burden  were  sung  simulta- 
neously, as  Boynton  believes  to  have  been  the  case,  or  alter- 
nately, as  certain  English  ballads  seem  to  require,  and  as 
Guest  assumed  in  his  definition,  this  question  of  musical 
technique  cannot  affect  the  inference  that  the  burden,  a 
"lyric  in  itself"  which  serves  as  refrain,  is  older  than  the 
ballad  or  narrative  song,  and  has  most  intimate  relations  with 
the  steps  of  the  dance.  In  other  words,  here  is  the  refrain  in 
its  passage  from  a  dominant  place  as  choral  repetition  of  the 
throng,  timed  to  their  steps  and  deriving  its  existence  from 
these  steps  and  from  the  expression  of  festal  delight  that 
prompted  them,  to  an  ancillary  and  subordinate  place  as  cho- 
ral support  to  the  artistic  progress  of  a  narrative  in  song. 
This  agrees  with  the  records  of  communal  song  not  only 
under  savage  conditions  but  among  the  homogeneous  and 
unlettered  communities  of  Europe.  Neocorus,^  a  priest  who 
writes  about  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,  de- 
fending that  unschooled  song  which  he  still  heard  at  the 
dances  and  festivities  of  his  countryfolk  of  the  Cimbrian 
peninsula,  and  which  still  flowed  so  easily,  although  much  of 
it  was  lost  that  ought  to  have  been  recorded  and  sung,  de- 
scribes their  communal  dance ;  it  is  in  a  fairly  advanced 
stage,  of  course,  and  is  led  by  an  expert.     First,  this  leader 

degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy  in  Enphsh,  May  i,  1897.  I"  3  vols.,  Ms.,  Har- 
vard University  Library.  The  material  is  excellently  put  together;  but  the  genetic 
and  historical  elements  are  not  sufficiently  brought  out.  The  comparative  work 
is  good,  and  as  a  study  of  actual  refrains  this  dissertation  is  of  distinct  value.  The 
burden-stem  is  discussed  in  section  V.,  pp.  184  ff. 

1  Chronikjd.  Dahlmann,  T.  176  f.     See  also  IT.  559  ft. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        319 

comes  forward  singing  alone,  or  with  a  colleague,  and  begins 
a  ballad.  "  And  when  he  has  sung  a  verse,  he  sings  no  fur- 
ther, but  the  whole  throng,  who  either  know  the  ballad  or 
else  have  paid  close  attention  to  him,  repeat  and  echo  the 
same  verse.  And  when  they  have  brought  it  to  the  point 
where  the  leader  stopped,  he  begins  again  and  sings  another 
verse."  This  is  again  repeated.  Presently,  with  the  singing 
thus  under  way,  a  leader  of  the  dance  comes  forward,  hat  in 
hand,  dances  about  the  room,  and  invites  the  whole  assem- 
bly to  join.  Facts  which  have  been  given  already,  and  facts 
still  to  be  considered,  show  clearly  that  these  leaders  of  song 
and  of  dance  are  deputies  of  the  throng  which  once  danced 
as  a  mass  to  its  own  choral  singing.  On  the  other  hand,  as 
Boynton  noted,  repetition  and  refrain  may  take  the  form  of  a 
genuine  burden.  In  Icelandic  ballads,  the  "burden-stem" 
was  often  in  a  different  metre  from  the  ballad  stanza ;  it  was 
sung  "  to  support  the  voice  by  harmonious  notes  under  the 
melody,"  and  "was  heard  separately  only  when  the  voices  sing- 
ing the  air  stopped."  ^  But  in  the  Faroe  isles  "the  whole 
stem  is  sung  first,  and  then  repeated  as  a  burden  at  the  end 
of  every  verse."  This  is  certainly  more  natural  than  the  pro- 
cess, known  in  Iceland,  where  a  leader  sings  the  incremental 
stanzas  and  the  throng  keeps  singing  the  burden  or  accom- 
paniment ;  although  a  very  familiar  ballad  might  so  be  sung, 
and  the  fact  would  of  course  indicate  either  a  shifting  of  inter- 
est toward  purely  musical  ends,  as  in  Elizabethan  England, 
or  else  a  devotion  on  the  part  of  the  crowd  to  the  dance 
proper  and  the  refrain,  while  the  narrative  is  left  to  the  leader 
of  the  song.2 

Apart  from  the  manner  of  singing  it  under  later  conditions, 

^  Chappell  quoted  by  Child,  Ballads,  I.  7.  "I  must  avow  myself,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Child,  "to  be  very  much  in  the  dark  as  to  the  exact  relation  of  stem  and 
burden."     See  also  Ballads,  II.  204,  first  note. 

-  This  technical  side  of  the  case  is  discussed  by  Valentin,  Studien  uber  die 
schwedischen  Volksmelodien,  pp.  9  f. 


320  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  refrain  in  itself,  so  far  as  ballads  are  concerned,  is  clearly 
the  recurrent  verse  or  verses  sung  by  the  festal  crowd  ;  and  the 
nearer  one  comes  to  the  source  of  a  ballad,  that  is,  to  the 
dancing  throng,  the  more  insistent  and  pervasive  and  domi- 
nant this  refrain  becomes.  That  is  the  fact  which  nobody 
has  ever  denied.  Jeanroy,^  in  a  careful  discussion  of  origins, 
concludes  that  refrains  are  really  fragments  of  song  for  the 
dance,  now  and  then,  as  he  hints,  of  songs  of  labour ;  he 
regards  them  solely  in  their  function  as  lines  sung  at  the  end 
of  a  stanza,  and  like  other  scholars  thinks  they  were  "  origi- 
nally repeated  by  the  chorus  in  answer  to  the  soloist."  ^  Else- 
where, however,  he  grants  that  this  need  not  have  been  the 
universal  fashion,  and  that  now  and  then  all  the  dancers  may 
have  sung  all  the  song,^  a  theory  fortified  by  his  conjecture 
that  the  refrain  was  once  made  up  of  imitative  sounds.  How- 
ever, the  modern  refrain  of  the  dance,  best  preserved  among 
French  and  Italians,  is  a  lively  lilting  couplet,  or  the  like,  to 
which  the  other  riming  verses  are  prefixed  in  the  growth  of 
the  actual  song,  as  in  the  stanzas  quoted  from  Bujeaud :  — 

Lk  haut,  dessus  ces  rochettes, 
J'entend  le  haut-bois  jouer, 
Et  vous  autr',  jeunes  fillettes, 
Qui  allez  au  bal  danser, 
Allez,  allez,  tetiez  vous  dreites, 
Prenez  gard''  de  «'  pas  tomber. 

^  Les  Origines  de  la  Poesie  Lyrique  en  France  au  Moyen  Age,  Paris,  1889, 
pp.  102  ff.  (see  note  2,  p.  iii),  and  387  ff.  On  the  etymology  of  refrain,  see 
pp.  103  f. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  113.  Jeanroy  will  not  accept  the  view  of  Wackernagel  and  Bartsch 
that  the  refrains  preserved  in  old  French  lyric  poetry  are  actual  "  popular  "  songs, 
or  fragments  of  them;  but  he  willingly  accepts  the  theory  that  all  refrains  were 
once  of  a  communal  kind.  These,  he  thinks,  are  hopelessly  lost.  See  pp.  115  ff. 
A  few  older  refrains  can  be  found  in  foreign  lyric  which  imitated  the  French; 
pp.  177  ff. 

^  Ibid.,^.  396,  note  I,  Or,  as  in  old  Portuguese  song,  copied  from  the  popular 
manner,  one  part  of  the  dancers  sang  one  verse,  and  another  part,  like  strophe  and 
antistrophe,   repeated  tlie   verse  with   a  slight  change,  usually  in  the  final  word 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         321 

The  transition  is  very  evident.  In  another  case  ^  the  leader 
calls  on  the  dancers  to  make  some  cry  imitative  of  animals, 
which  now  serves  as  refrain ;  but,  wherever  found,  the  test 
of  a  really  popular  refrain,  as  Jeanroy  insists,  is  that  it  was 
made  for  the  dance.  Read  "in  the  dance,"  and  communal 
conditions  are  even  better  satisfied. 

For  the  ballad  is  a  song  made  in  the  dance,  and  so  by  the 
dance ;  a  mass  of  those  older  dance-songs  which  have  come 
down  to  us  as  popular,  are  later  development,  are  of  either 
aristocratic  or  learned  origin,  and  simply  point  back  to  the 
communal  dance  which  is  the  real  source  of  the  song. 
Originally  a  chorus  of  all  the  dancers,  it  gave  vent  to  the 
feehngs  of  joy,  —  in  the  old  vocero  dance,  of  grief,  —  to  the 
common  emotion  of  the  throng.  An  impulse  which  makes 
for  this  song  of  the  dance  is  simple  deHght  that  the  season  of 
dancing  is  begun  :  — 

A  I'entrada  del  tems  clar,  eya  ;  ^ 

and  so  one  may  trace  these  invocations  of  nature  to  their  later 
form  at  the  beginning  of  a  narrative  song  like  Robin  Hood 
and  the  Monk.  This  dancing  of  the  round  as  an  expression 
of  feeling  on  the  part  of  a  throng  —  dancing  in  pairs,  we 
know,  did  not  reach  Neocorus's  country,  for  example,  until 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  —  meets  one  every- 
where in  mediaeval  records,  and  it  has  died  a  reluctant  death ; 

which  rimes  with  the  other  final  word.  The  connection  of  this  with  the  conlrasto 
of  lover  and  sweetheart,  imitated  in  the  dance,  of  debate,  flyting,  tenso,  and  the 
like,  would  lead  too  far  afield.     See  p.  207,  and  below,  p.  325. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  405.  This  chapter,  where  Jeanroy  traces  the  growth  of  artificial 
forms,  like  the  rondel  and  so  on,  out  of  purely  popular  refrain  and  verse,  is  of  dis- 
tinct value  to  the  student  of  communal  poetry.  It  completely  refutes  the  claim  of 
superficial  criticism,  common  enough  of  late,  that  ballad  and  folksong  are  merely 
dregs  of  an  older  art,  and  that  some  pretty  comparison,  say  a  tramp  in  an  old  dress- 
coat,  solves  the  communal  problem.  As  jaunty  and  insufferable  a  piece  of  comment 
as  can  be  found  anpvhere  in  print  is  Mr.  Gregory  Smith's  chapter  on  "The  Prob- 
lem of  the  Ballads  and  Popular  Songs"  in  his  Transition  Period,  pp.  180  ff. 

^  See  above,  p.  174.     The  refrain  is  very  clearly  an  actual  cry  at  the  dance. 

V 


322  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

unless  observation  be  at  fault,  even  children  are  ceasing  to 

play  the  old  round  games  common  not  many  years  ago,  a 

city  of  refuge  that  seemed  at  one  time  so  secure.     But  in 

those  mediaeval  days  one  danced  in  throngs  on  almost  any 

occasion ;    and    impossible    as    the    story    may   be    if   taken 

literally,    there   is   truth   enough    for   our   purpose   in    that 

account  1  of   Leicester's  army  in    1173  pausing  on  a  heath, 

where  they  "  fell  to  daunce  and  singe  — 

"  Hoppe,  Wylikin,  hoppe  Wyllikin, 
Ingland  is  thine  and  mine." 

Many  of  the  folksongs  go  little  beyond  this  stage  of  an 
exhortation  to  dance,  along  with  a  brief  comment  on  the 
posture  of  affairs  or  on  the  scene.  Such  an  exhortation  as 
refrain  for  the  dance  occurs  in  the  old  play  of  the  Foicr 
Elements,  with  an  interesting  context.     Says  Ignorance  — 

I  can  you  thank  ;  that  is  done  well  ; 
It  is  pity  ye  had  not  a  minstrel 
For  to  augment  your  solace. 

and  Sensual  Desire  replies:  — 

As  for  minstrel,  it  maketh  no  force,'^ 
Ye  shall  see  me  dance  a  course 
Without  a  minstrel. 

Then  he  singeth  this  song  and  danceth  withal,  and  evermore 
maketh  countenance  according  to  the  matter;  and  all  the 
others  answer  likewise  :  — 

Dance  we,  dance  we,  prance  we,  prance  we. 

Ignorance  says  it  "  is  the  best  dance  without  a  pipe  he  has 
seen  this  seven  year."  But  Humanity  inclines  to  think  "a 
kit  or  taboret"  would  improve  the  dance;  and  the  dancers 
retire  to  a  tavern  where  they  are  sure  "  of  one  or  twain  of 
minstrels  that  can  well  play."  Humanity  now  proposes  "to 
sing  some  lusty  ballad  "  ;  but  Ignorance  is  against  all  such 

1  Quoted  by  Ritson,  Anc.  Songs^,  p.  xxxv.  ^  Difference. 


THE    DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        323 

"  peevish  prick-ear'd  song,"  and  when  he  is  told  that  prick- 
song  in  church  pleases  God,  makes  the  often-quoted  reply 
that  there  is  no  good  reason  why  it  is  "  not  as  good  to  say 
plainly  Give  me  a  spade,  as  Give  me  a  spa,  ve,  va,  ve,  va, 
vade."  No;  if  a  song  is  wanted,  one  of  the  good  old  sort 
will  do ;  and  there  follows  a  list  not  unHke  that  of  Moros  in 
the  play  or  that  of  Laneham  in  the  letter,  with  the  trifling 
exception  that  this  runs  into  a  helpless  sort  of  burlesque. 
"  Robin  Hood  in  Barnsdale  stood "  is  probably  a  genuine 
first  line,  and  so  are  some  of  the  other  titles.  The  main 
thing  is  that  ballad  singing  is  opposed  to  prick-song  and  the 
new  fashions  generally,  and  that  a  refrain  from  all  lusty 
throats  is  better  for  the  dance  than  pipe  or  minstrel.  The 
refrain  in  this  case  is  just  the  old  exhortation  to  dance.  This 
exhortation  is  common   enough  in  folksong,    alone  or  as  a 

refrain  :  ^  — 

Springe  wir  den  reigen  .   .  . 

Saute,  blonde,  ma  joli"  blonde  .  .  . 

but  a  pure  and  simple  description  of  the  matter  in  hand,  as 
communal,  spontaneous,  and  immediate  an  expression  in  song 
as  may  be,  and  tied  to  steps  of  the  dance  by  the  shortest 
of  tethers,  is  doubtless  to  be  found  in  the  game  where  a 
circle  of  children  dance  round  one  of  their  companions  in 
the  ring  to  this  refrain  :  ^  — 

^  It  is  useless  to  pile  up  references;  any  collection  has  such  refrains  in  plenty. 
This  "springewir  den  reigen"  (^Carmina  Bur  ana,  ed.  Schmeller,  p.  178),  how- 
ever, like  Neidhart's  dance-songs,  although  it  goes  with  the  welcome  to  May,  is 
conventional  already  and  artistic. 

2  Chambers,  Popular  Rhymes  of  Scotland,  pp.  132  ff.     "  Another  form  of  this 

game  is  only  a  kind  of  dance,^'  says  the  editor,  without  italics,  "  in  which  the  girls 

first  join  hands  in  a  circle  and  sing  while  moving  round  to  the  tune  of  Nancy 

Dawson :  — 

Here  we  go  round  the  mulberry-bush, 

and  so  on.     Then  :  — 

This  is  the  way  the  ladies  walk  .  .  . 

This  is  the  way  they  wash  the  clothes  .  .  . 

with  refrain,  or  chorus,  as  before,  and  imitative  actions." 


324  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Here  we  go  the  jingo-ring, 
The  jingo-ring,  the  jingo-ring, 
Here  we  go  the  jingo-ring 
About  the  merry-ma-tanzie. 

Let  this  be  a  survival  of  a  wedding  ceremony,  or  whatever 
the  learned  will,  the  refrain,  sung  with  each  stanza,  and 
suited  of  course  to  the  action,  is  typical  of  the  earliest  choral 
stage. ^  Now  so  soon  as  narrative  takes  the  place  of  this 
description  of  contemporary  and  common  action,  this  exhorta- 
tion of  all  to  all  to  do  something  which  they  are  all  doing,  then 
memory,  deliberation,  arrangement,  are  needed,  and  an  artist 
comes  to  the  fore.  When  a  ballad  records  some  doing  of 
the  folk,  when  the  epic  element  takes  upper  hand,  it  is  clear 
that  a  process  of  separation  is  inevitable.  A  ballad  of  this 
sort  may  long  remain  as  favourite  song  for  the  communal 
dance.  Thus  a  lively  little  thing,  found  in  Flanders  and  in 
Germany,^  is  of  particular  interest,  first  for  the  narrative 
which  is  the  old  satire  on  monk  and  nun,  so  popular  in 
mediaeval  times ;  secondly  for  the  refrain,  which  is  nothing 
less  than  a  dance  about  the  maypole,  keeping  the  song  itself 
in  some  places  for  this  festivity ;  and  thirdly  for  the  wander- 
ing of  the  ballad  as  a  whole,  from  the  fifteenth  century 
down  to  its  modern  refuge  in  a  children's  game :  — 

A  monk  went  walking  along  the  strand,  — 

Hey  !  'twas  in  the  May  ! 
He  took  his  sweetheart  ^  by  the  hand,  — 

Hey  !  'twas  in  the  May  ! 
So  gay  ! 

Hey  !  'twas  in  the  May  ! 

^  Lucian,  in  his  treatise  on  the  dance,  is  no  authority  for  primitive  dancing  and 
refrain  ;  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  he  gives  such  an  exhortation  as  a  kind  of  refrain. 
"The  song  that  they  sing  as  they  dance,"  he  says  of  the  Lacedaemonians,  §  ii,  "  is 
an  invitation  to  Venus  and  the  loves.  .  .  .  One  of  these  songs  is  a  lesson  in  danc- 
ing (  !)  :  'On,'  they  sing, '  young  people,  stretch  your  legs  and  dance  your  best.' " 

*  Coussemaker,  I.  328;    Firmenich,  I.  380,  TV.  679. 

■''  Tn  the  other  version  "  nonnetje,"  "  nonnekc,"  little  nun. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        325 

Here  the  dance  has  held  its  own  with  the  story ;  but  in  most 
cases,  as  the  foresinger  or  exarch  takes  command,  the  new 
verses,  beginning  as  incremental  repetition  in  the  dance, 
grow  bolder  and  learn  to  walk  alone ;  singing  is  still  a  con- 
dition, but  the  dance  is  only  an  occasion,  not  a  cause  ;  and 
finally  the  crowd  passes  over  the  bridge  of  chorus  and  refrain 
into  a  quite  passive  state  of  audience,  with  intermittent  echo 
and  applause,  utterly  disappearing  at  last  behind  the  sheets 
of  a  broadside. 

This,  of  course,  is  a  conclusion  at  very  long  range ;  and 
there  is  an  extensive  period,  a  large  field,  where  elements  of 
art  mingled  freely  with  the  old  communal  motive.  For  a 
single  example,  take  the  Bouquet  de  Marjolaine}  This  is  a 
case  of  incremental  repetition,  with  the  same  rimes  through- 
out, and  an  unvaried  refrain  or  chorus  which  is  knitted  to 
each  stanza  by  this  pervading  rime.  The  third  line  of  each 
stanza  forms  the  opening  line  of  the  next  stanza,  so  that  the 
story  proceeds  slowly  but  surely  to  the  end.  The  whole  can 
be  gathered  from  one  stanza  and  its  refrain,  with  addition 
of  the  following  incremental  Unes :  — 

Me  promenant  dans  la  plaine, 

(Tir  ton  joli  has  de  laine) 
J'ai  trouve  un  Capitaine. 

(Tir'  ton,  tir'  ton,  tir'  ton  bas, 
Tir'  ton  joli  bas  de  laine, 

Car  on  le  verra.) 

Then,  "il  m'a  appele'  vilaine"  ;  "  je  ne  suis  point  si  vilaine  ;  " 
"  le  plus  jeun'  fils  du  roi  m'aime ; "  "  il  m'a  donne  pour 
etrenne  "  — "  une  bourse  d'ecus  pleine,"  "  un  bouquet  de 
marjolaine;  "  "  je  I'ai  plante  dans  la  plaine  ;  "  — and,  for  good 
last,  and  with  that  touch  of  pathos  common  in  these  things, 

^  Bujeaud,  Chants  et  Chansons  .  .  .  de  Vouest,  \.  88,  from  Poitou;  reprinted 
by  Crane,  Chansons  Populaires,  pp.  87  fF.  See  a  similar  song,  Crane,  pp.  162  ff. ; 
many  more  could  be  instanced,  and  some  have  been  already  named. 


326  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

despite  the  gay  tone,  "  s'il  fleurit,  je  serai  reine  "  ;  and  so, 
with  the  refrain,  an  end.  Full  of  communal  elements,  this 
song  is  nevertheless  of  an  artistic  type  and  of  an  aristocratic 
origin,  an  offshot  of  the  pastourelle  and  its  kin ;  popular 
enough,  of  a  certain  simplicity  and  beauty,  it  is  not  directly 
communal  in  its  tone ;  it  has  gone  among  the  people,  and 
yet,  though  it  was  imitated  from  purely  communal  refrains, 
like  other  and  older  songs  treated  so  successfully  by  Jeanroy, 
it  has  not  come  directly  from  the  people.  In  fact,  the  com- 
munal refrain  of  the  dance  is  seldom  in  such  independent 
case  as  this  infectious  lilt;  when  it  is  not  a  survival,  as  in 
children's  games,  its  best  chance  for  life  is  as  parasite  to  a 
narrative  ballad  or  even  to  a  "  lyric  of  sentiment  and  reflec- 
tion," as  anthologies  call  them.  Thus  Ten  Brink  is  undoubt- 
edly right  when  he  takes  the  refrain  as  old,  traditional, 
communal,  and  the  stanzas  as  new  and  artistic,  in  that  pretty 
English  lyric,  Ichot  a  btirde  in  boure  biyht,  which  has  the 
refrain  at  the  beginning,  as  in  many  Provencal  ballads :  — 

Blow,  northern  wind, 

Send  thou  me  my  sweeting  ! 

Blow,  northern  wind,  blow,  blow,  blow  ! 

Compare  this  with  the  artistic  refrain  of  Alisoim,  from  which 
it  differs  so  widely,  and  with  the  refrain  of  the  Cuckoo  Song, 
in  its  recorded  form  part  of  an  elaborate  composition,  but 
doubtless  taken  from  the  "nature"  refrain  of  a  dance.  The 
ballads  and  folksongs  of  Europe  are  of  course  in  the  transi- 
tional stage.  They  ought  to  be  sung,  but  many  of  them  may 
have  been  recited ;  they  echo  the  cadence  of  a  dancing 
throng,  and  have  often  timed  the  dance,  though  they  are 
separable  from  such  company.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind, 
however,  that  many  ballads  in  which  one  would  not  now  sus- 
pect such  uses,  were  employed  to  regulate  the  slow  steps  of  a 
dance.     Narrative  ballads  were  in  great  favour  for  the  pur- 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        327 

pose ;  Faroe  islanders  danced  to  the  stories  of  Sigurd,  and 
the  Russians,  whose  folksongs  are  always  choral  and  without 
instrumental  music,  dance  the  khorovodlo  a  narrative  song,  — 
in  fact,  the  word  means  a  blended  song  and  dance  ;  while 
even  the  Robin  Hood  ballads,  if  we  may  believe  the  Complaynt 
of  Scotland,  as  well  as  some  ballad  of  Johnny  Armstrong, 
were  sung  at  the  dance  of  the  shepherds.  Savages  sing 
narrative  poems  to  the  dance,  and  so  do  Melanesians.^  One 
can  therefore  understand  the  statement  made  by  Steenstrup,^ 
that  every  genuine  ballad  has  a  refrain,  though  this  may  not 
be  recorded  ;  for  the  refrain  is  the  tie  which  binds  a  ballad 
to  its  parent  dance.  As  one  retraces  the  path  of  the  ballad, 
the  refrain  grows  in  importance,  slowly  pushing  the  leader  or 
soloist  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  throng,  until  he  is  lost  in  it; 
and  a  repetition  of  cadenced  choral  cries  becomes  the  main 
factor  of  poetry.  As  every  one  knows,  those  cadenced  cries 
were  regulated  by  the  dance  ;  and  to  this  important  factor 
in  early  poetry,  already  considered  under  the  head  of  rhythm, 
we  must  now  turn. 

Dancing,  most  momentary  of  all  the  arts,  as  A.  W.  Schlegel 
called  it,  in  Wagner's  words  "  the  most  real,"  seeing  that  the 


1  Waitz,  Anthropologie,  VI.  606. 

2  Vore  Folkeviser,  pp.  75-112,  "  Omkvaedet."  Geijer  denied  that  the  refrain  is 
necessary  to  a  ballad,  but  Steenstrup's  argument  is  convincing;  out  of  502  Scan- 
dinavian ballads  vs^hich  he  examined,  not  more  than  20  lacked  a  refrain.  The 
ballads  in  Child's  collection  point  the  same  way,  at  least  for  the  older  and  shorter 
ballads;  the  Gest,  of  course,  and  others  of  that  sort,  as  well  as  broadside  copies, 
have  passed  from  the  lyrical  stage.  But  even  these  must  go  back  to  an  earlier 
song  with  a  refrain.  Of  the  two-line  ballads,  the  older  form,  there  are  31, 
and  of  these  only  7  lack  the  refrain  in  their  present  form.  Of  the  305  ballads 
in  the  collection,  106  in  at  least  one  version  show  evidence  of  refrain  or  chorus,  — 
more  than  a  third;  while  of  some  1250  versions  in  all,  about  300  have  the  refrain. 
This  count  was  made  very  carefully  by  Mr.  C.  H.  Carter,  of  Haverford  College. 
Of  course.  Wolf  had  long  since  proved  that  the  refrain  is  characteristic  of  all  early 
poetry  in  the  vernacular,  and  played  a  leading  part  in  popular  verse  everywhere, 
from  its  first  collection  in  the  fifteenth  century  down  to  the  present  time.  See  his 
Lais,  pp.  27,  191. 


328  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

whole  man  is  concerned  in  it,  "  from  head  to  foot,"  with  mo- 
tions and  gestures  that  give  it  tone,  and  rhythm  that  gives  it 
speech,^  was  also  the  primitive  and  universal  art,  the  sign  of 
social  consent;  consenting  steps,  with  mimicry  of  whatever 
sort,  timed  a  series  of  rude  cries  which  expressed  the  emotion 
of  the  moment,  and  so  grew  into  articulate  language.  But 
the  song  detached  itself  from  dancing  long  before  dancing 
could  shake  off  the  choral  cries  and  the  refrain.  Among 
Tasmanians  and  Australians  songs  already  existed  apart  from 
the  dance  ;  but  there  was  no  dance  without  a  song,  and  the 
dances  were  prevailingly  of  the  whole  horde  or  clan.  Survivals 
of  this  primitive  stage,  and  the  early  history  of  dancing  in  all 
quarters  of  the  world,  afford  good  warrant  for  the  conclusion 
of  Bohme  ;  ^  "no  dance  without  singing,  and  no  song  without 
a  dance,"  is  his  axiom  for  earliest  times.  Moreover,  this 
proof  of  the  connection  of  song  and  dance  in  the  primitive 
horde,  a  bond  which  one  or  two  writers  have  lately  tried  to 
sever,  but  without  success,  disposes  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's 
attempt^  to  explain  the  dance  as  a  modification  of  the  old 
movement  of  obeisance. 

Dancing  is  universal  among  savages  ;  and  if  a  few  cases 
occur  which  make  against  this  doctrine,  one  may  safely  as- 
sume,   as  Ribot  does,  and  even  Wallaschek,*  that  they  are 

^  "Das  Kunstwerk  der  Zukunft,"  Schrifiett,  III.,  pp.  87,  89.  See  also  Ribot, 
Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  p.  334,  who  calls  dancing  the  "  primordial  art,"  and 
shows  that  here  is  the  transition  from  mere  movement  to  sesthetic  activity. 

2  Geschichte  des  Tanzes,  p.  4.  This  is  the  best  treatise  on  the  subject,  though 
mainly  confined  to  Germany.  A  History  of  Dajicing  from  the  Earliest  Ages  .  .  . 
from  the  French  of  Gaston  Vuillier,  with  a  Sketch  of  Dancing  in  England,  by 
Joseph  Grego,  London,  1898,  is  of  scant  use  for  the  student  of  origins  and  devel- 
opment. Dancing  "  was  probably  unknown  to  the  earliest  ages  of  humanity,"  a 
bold  assertion,  is  followed  by  another,  that  "  it  is  certain  that  dancing  was  born 
with  man."  Information  of  value  can  be  found,  however,  on  special  topics;  eg. 
on  the  hranle,  p.  100,  and  its  connection  with  children's  games. 

^  Sociology,  II.  123. 

*  See  also  Yrjo  Hirn,  Forstudier,  pp.  89  f.  Dismissing  exceptions,  he  declares 
that  "  dancing  in  its  widest  sense  is  as  universal  as  laughing  and  weeping." 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        329 

due  to  insufficient  observation/  or  else,  at  the  worst,  that 
they  belong  to  tribes  with  hardly  any  claims  of  humanity, 
degenerates,  retrogrades,  who  have  no  social  order  and  con- 
sequently no  dance.  Again,  the  primitive  form  of  the  dance 
is  to  be  found  in  the  choral  throng ;  but  it  must  be  borne  in 
mind  that  even  rudest  tribes  can  develop  an  art  of  compli- 
cated, traditional,  and  ritual  character,^  which  in  its  turn 
breeds  the  solo  and  the  professional  artist  in  dancing.  How- 
ever, the  choral  dies  hard  even  under  civilized  conditions ; 
among  savages  it  is  prominent  everywhere  and  in  full  vigour. 
Waitz,^  speaking  of  tribes  in  the  South  Seas,  says  that  song 
there  is  mainly  choral,  and  dancing,  affair  of  the  community 
as  a  whole,  is  as  universal  as  song,  often  passing  into  mimicry 
and  a  rude  drama.  Everywhere,  too,  song  is  accompanied  by 
dancing,  and  when  women  thus  dance  and  sing  they  clap 
hands  or  slap  the  hip  in  time  with  their  steps  and  words, 
after  the  manner  of  their  sisters  in  mediaeval  Europe.  Musi- 
cal instruments  are  few.  Chamisso  noted  now  and  then 
what  he  took  to  be  degeneration  of  song  into  mere  howling ; 
but  we  know  there  is  a  more  excellent  way  to  explain  these 
festal  and  cadenced  cries.  Dancing  is  in  order  at  each 
important  moment  for  the  community,  —  when  strangers 
arrive,  when  war  is  imminent,  at  feasts  of  every  sort.  As 
with  these  natives  of  the  South  Sea,  so  with  other  and  more 
savage  tribes.  It  is  useless  to  insist  in  detail  upon  the 
African  love  of  dancing,  which  goes  on  every  evening  and  in 
every  village  for  hours  at  a  time.  "The  natives  of  Obbo 
began  their  dance  by  all  singing  together  a  wild  but  pleasant- 
sounding  melody  in  chorus,* "  is  only  one  of  many  descrip- 

1  No  dancing  in  Iceland,  saj's  Kerguelen,  who  visited  there  in  1767.  See 
Pinkerton,  Voyages  and  Travels,!.  751.  Volumes  of  proof  could  be  furnished 
for  refuting  this  light-hearted  assertion. 

2  See  Bastian,  "  Masken  und  Maskereien,"  Zeiischr.  f.  Volkerpsych.,  XIV.  347. 

3  Antkropologie  der  A'aturvolker,  VI.  78  ff. 
*  Wallaschek,  p.  189. 


330  THE   BEGINNINGS  OF   POETRY 

tions  of  this  favourite  communal  diversion ;  but  the  legends 
and  the  complicated  artistic  dances  which  exist  side  by  side 
with  the  choral  song  and  the  communal  dance  warn  one  that 
while  primitive  ways  survive  on  the  Dark  Continent,  there  is 
a  lower  stage  of  song  and  dance  to  be  found  elsewhere.  Like 
the  Botocudos  in  South  America,  the  Australians  are  on  a 
quite  elementary  level  with  regard  to  dance  and  song ;  they 
attach  more  importance  to  the  gesture  than  to  the  articulate 
word,  so  far  as  the  telling  of  stories  or  the  describing  of 
events  is  concerned,  and  they  know  scarcely  any  individual 
performance.^  Dance  and  song  are  of  the  horde,  the  clan, 
as  a  whole.  Choral  shouts,  refrains  which  repeat  a  word  or 
a  short  phrase  indefinitely,  and  so  time  the  steps  of  the 
throng,  make  the  original  social  art ;  with  the  aid  of  gesture, 
mimicry  of  labour,  of  feats  of  hunting,  this  passes  into 
kangaroo-dances,  erotic  pantomimes,  sham  fights,  and  all  the 
rest.  Perhaps,  as  Hirn  ^  suggests,  the  dance  of  the  Weddas, 
or  Veddahs,  in  Ceylon  is  as  primitive  as  anything  of  the  kind ; 
although  Ehrenreich's  account  of  the  Botocudos^  shows  little 
if  any  advance.  A  spear  is  stuck  into  the  ground  to  serve  as 
centre  for  the  ring  of  dancers,  who  move  with  swaying  of  legs 
and  arms  to  the  cadence  of  their  own  singing,  —  call  it  rather 
shouting, —  while  they  keep  exact  time  by  slapping  the  naked 
stomach.'*  From  this  communal  dance  and  song,  emerges 
after  a  while,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Botocudos,  an  individual 
performer ;  and  it  is  clear  that  elaborate  dances,  such  as  those 

^  Letourneau,  p.  28. 

^  Work  quoted,  pp.  95  ff.  lie  refers  to  Hartshorne,  "The  Weddas,"  Indian 
Antiquary,  VIII.  316  f. ;  E.  Tennent,  Ceylon,  II.  437  ff. ;  and  E.  Schmidt,  Globus, 
EXV.  15  f. 

'  See  above,  p.  95.  It  is  interesting,  however,  particularly  in  connection  with 
the  idea  (jf  rhythm  as  the  chief  factor  in  the  social  process,  that  these  Veddahs 
live  mainly  in  pairs;  "except  on  some  extraordinary  occasion  they  never  assemble 
together,"  and  this  dance  is  evidently  their  chief  means  to  express  a  social  union. 
See  Bastian,  Der  Volkergedanke  .  .  .,  p.  72. 

*  See  also  the  Brazilian  dances  noted  by  Lery,  above,  p.  312. 


THE   DIFFERENCING  COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        331 

given  for  the  benefit  of  Captain  Cook  and  other  foreign 
visitors,  are  an  outgrowth  of  this  primitive  huddling  in  mass 
with  concert  of  cries  and  movements.  It  is  significant  that 
instinct  of  the  clan  calls  for  some  concerted  dance  and  song 
as  necessary  preface  for  war  or  any  similar  doing  of  the 
community  as  a  whole ;  in  long  range  of  development  this 
is  the  war-dance  of  our  own  Indians,  often  described,  where 
a  general  chorus  serves  as  background  and  stimulus  alike  to 
the  volunteers  who  step  forward  singly  and  promise,  in 
chanted  and  improvised  song  that  times  their  steps,  deeds  of 
individual  valour  in  the  impending  fight.  So,  perhaps,  the 
gab  of  romance,  the  gilp  or  gilpczvide  ^  of  Germanic  warriors, 
was  originally  made  not  only,  as  we  know  it,  in  the  mead  hall, 
but  to  the  chorus  of  the  tribes  and  with  the  steps  of  a  dance. 
At  close  range,  however,  and  with  the  foe  in  sight,  it  was  a 
communal  and  general  gab,  a  choral  performance ;  witness 
the  interesting  account  of  Captain  Cook.^  In  the  first  voy- 
age, some  four  hundred  islanders,  about  to  attack  the  captain 
and  his  friends,  but  hesitating,  at  length  "  sung  the  song  of 
defiance  and  began  to  dance."  Such  was  a  particular  case ; 
and  in  his  general  statement.  Cook  says  that  New  Zealanders, 
before  they  begin  the  onset,  "  join  in  a  war-song,  to  which 
they  all  keep  the  exactest  time  "  ;  and  while  he  does  not  men- 
tion the  dance  here,  it  is  evidently  implied,  for  his  scattered 
accounts  of  skirmish  and  fight  are  full  of  it.  A  curious  case 
is  what  would  seem  to  be  a  war-dance  in  a  boat  which  was 
attacking  Cook's  ship  ;  as  it  approached,  the  savages  in  the 
boat  varied  menaces  with  peaceful  talk,  "  till,  imagining  the 
sailors  were  afraid  of  them,  they  began  the  war-song  and 
dance,  and  threw  stones  on  board  the  ship."  Then  Cook 
goes  on:  "In  the  war-dance  their  motions  are  numerous, 
their  limbs  are  distorted  .  .  .  they  shake  their  darts,  brandish 

1  Beowulf,  631  ff,  2631  ff.     The  beat  is  the  same  thing;   Battle  of  Maldon,  213. 
^  Pinkerton,  Voyages  and  Travels,  London,  180S  ff.,  XL  535,  543,  648. 


332  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

their  spears  .  .  .  they  accompany  this  dance  with  a  song, 
which  is  sung  in  concert ;  every  strain  ending  with  a  loud 
and  deep  sigh.  There  is  an  activity  and  vigour  in  their 
dancing  which  is  truly  admirable  ;  and  their  idea  of  keeping 
time  is  such  that  sixty  or  eighty  paddles  will  strike  at  once 
against  the  sides  of  their  boats,  and  make  only  one  report." 
Concerted  singing,  this  communal  initiative,  goes  not  only 
before  war,  but  before  embassies,  messages  of  peace,  greet- 
ings, and  the  like;  and  the  dance  is  clearly  an  original  prop 
of  this  song,  now  and  then  retained,  but  often  omitted.  In 
Cook's  last  voyage,^  "  a  double  canoe,  in  which  were  twelve 
men,  came  towards  us.  As  they  drew  near  the  ship,  they 
recited  some  words  in  concert,  by  way  of  chorus,  one  of  the 
number  first  standing  up  and  giving  the  word  before  each 
repetition,"  —  a  "  solemn  chant,"  Cook  calls  it.  Readers  of 
these  and  other  voyages  in  the  South  Seas,  know  how  sing- 
ing rather  than  speaking  takes  the  foreground  of  private  as 
well  as  of  tribal  life  ;  a  chief  coming  on  board  the  ship  hails 
it  with  a  song  to  explain  his  visit,  and  there  is  the  case  of  the 
islander  who  told  in  song  his  story  of  hfe  aboard  an  English 
ship,  and,  asking  the  native  who  had  met  him  what  news 
there  was  from  home,  put  his  excited  questions  in  rhythm 
and  got  the  equally  excited  answers  in  rapid  chant.  Behind 
this  individual  song  is  the  chorus ;  with  the  chorus  is  nearly 
always  the  dance  ;  wherever  the  dance,  there  is  song.  Musi- 
cal instruments  the  islanders  knew,  of  course,  —  drums,  per- 
haps, best ;  but  as  Cook  says  ^  of  a  great  dance  which  was 
given  for  him,  it  did  not  seem  "  that  the  dancers  were  much 
assisted  by  these  sounds,  but  by  a  chorus  of  vocal  music,  in 
which  all  tJie  performers  joined  at  the  same  time." 

*  Pinkerton,  Voyages  attd  Travels,  pp.  652,  723. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  667;  no  italics  in  the  original.  So,  p.  654,  twenty  young  women 
dance  to  their  own  singing,  and  in  many  other  cases;  the  fact  is  beyond  dispute. 
For  a  dance  of  more  complicated  character,  but  with  chorus  and  refrain,  see 
pp.  678  f. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL    ELEMENTS         333 

Indians  of  the  Western  continent  have  the  same  tale  to  tell, 
and  it  has  been  told  in  part  already  by  Lery,  Lafitau,  and  the 
older  travellers.  A  century  and  more  ago,  Carver  ^  noted 
that  the  savages  of  North  America  "  usually  dance  either 
before  or  after  every  meal";^  and  "they  never  meet  on  any 
public  occasion,  but  this  makes  a  part  of  the  entertainment. 
.  .  .  The  youth  of  both  sexes  amuse  themselves  in  this 
manner  every  evening."  At  the  feasts  and  other  dances, 
"  every  man  rises  in  his  turn,  and  moves  about  with  great 
freedom  and  boldness,  singing,  as  he  does  so,  the  exploits  of 
his  ancestors.  During  this  the  company,  who  are  seated  on 
the  ground  in  a  circle,  join  with  him  in  making  the  cadence, 
by  an  odd  tone,  which  they  utter  all  together,  and  which 
sounds  '  HeJi,  heh,  JicJi.  '  "  This  they  repeat  "  with  the  same 
violence  during  the  whole  of  the  entertainment."  "The 
women  dance  without  taking  any  steps  .  .  .  but  with  their 
feet  conjoined,  moving  by  turns  their  toes  and  heels.  .  .  .  Let 
those  who  join  in  the  dance  be  ever  so  numerous,  they  keep 
time  so  exactly  with  each  other  that  no  interruption  ensues." 

In  recent  times  the  intricate  dances,  ritual  and  ceremony 
which,  of  course,  reach  back  in  far  tradition,  have  been 
studied  and  recorded ;  but  this  is  not  a  primitive  phase  of 
the  art,^  and  even  among  the  Moqui  and  Navajo  tribes  of 

1  Three  Years'  Travel,  etc.,  Phila.,  1796;  the  travels  were  in  1 766-1 768. 
See  pp.  171  ff.,  220. 

2  See  Lescarbot,  Histoire  de  la  Nouvelle  France,  Paris,  1609,  pp.  317  ff.,  an 
account  of  the  tribal  dances  of  the  Algonquins  in  honour  of  a  victory,  with  inter- 
esting particulars.  So,  too,  pp.  691  ff.,  another  account,  with  a  dance  where  they 
"  do  nothing  but  sing  He  or  Het !  like  a  man  cutting  wood,  with  a  movement  of 
the  arm;  and  they  dance  a  'round'  without  holding  one  another  or  stirring  from 
one  place,  beating  their  feet  upon  the  earth."  So,  says  Lescarbot,  they  make  fires 
and  jump  through  them,  like  our  French  peasants  on  the  eve  of  St.  John,  who 
shout  and  dance  the  whole  night.  His  fifteenth  chapter,  pp.  765  ff. ,  is  on  Danses 
et  Chansons,  and  accents  the  dance  after  a  feast.  Here,  too,  he  says,  "  apres  la 
panse  vient  la  danse."     Savages,  he  says,  always  sing  to  their  dancing. 

^  It  is  unfortunately  not  superfluous  to  suggest  that  the  dances  described  by 
Homer  are  anything  but  primitive,  though  they  retain  some  primitive  traits.     The 


334  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

New  Mexico,  where  instrumental  music  is  common,  now  and 
then  the  dancers  furnish  their  own  music,  each  one  rolling 
out  "  an  azv,  aw,  aw,  azv,  in  a  deep  bass  tone."  ^  So  in  ancient 
Mexico,  where  civilization  of  a  sort  had  long  held  sway,  the 
dances  "  were  almost  always  accompanied  by  singing  "  ;  this, 
however,  was  "adjusted  by  the  beating  of  instruments."^ 
But  this  public  dance  is  no  longer  communal  in  the  old  way ; 
ritual  of  the  clan  becomes  a  state  religion,  while  dance  and 
song  are  not  only  lifted  but  expanded.  There  is  a  sense  of 
ritual,  to  be  sure,  about  the  dance  of  a  small  community,  as 
when  among  the  Bechuanas,  to  ask  a  man  "  what  he  dances," 
is  the  same  as  asking  to  what  clan  or  tribe  he  belongs,  a 
phrase  curiously  akin  to  Gosson's  remark^  that  "to  daunce 
the  same  round"  means  to  be  of  the  same  flock.  But  all  this 
belongs  only  to  the  primitive  horde  or  the  late  homogeneous 
community ;  the  dance  of  such  a  little  clan  about  their  grow- 
ing crops  yielded  to  traditional  and  solemn  rites,  and  the  spon- 
taneous singing  and  dancing  which  Vergil  recommends  to  his 
farmers  *  is  really  a  more  primitive  stage  of  the  art  than  the 
seemingly  older  ceremony  of  the  Arval  brothers,  which  had 
already  hardened  into  ritual  and  belonged  to  a  close  corpora- 
tion under  control  of  the  state.     Tribal  dances  become  expia- 

dance  pictured  on  the  shield  of  Achilles  (//.  XVIII.),  youths  dancing  and  fair 
maids,  hand  in  hand,  is  a  ronde,  to  be  sure,  in  form,  but  a  society  affair  as  well, 
with  full  dress,  complicated  figures,  and  a  "  divine  minstrel  "  for  the  music.  How- 
ever, the  vintage  dance  to  the  Linos  song,  described  in  the  preceding  verses,  holds, 
like  our  harvest  refrains,  an  older  fashion. 

^  Ten  Broeck,  in  Schoolcraft,  IV.  84. 

2  Clavigero,  History  of  Mexico,  trans.  Cullen,  London,  1787, 1.  399  f.,  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  great  public  dances. 

'  Schoole  of  Abuse,  p.  34. 

*  When  M.  Gaston  Paris,  Les  Origines  de  la  Poesie  Lyrique  en  France  au 
Moyen  Age,  p.  42,  says  he  has  found  no  dance  among  the  old  Romans  except  the 
professional  dance,  he  overlooks  the  fact  that  this  rustic  dance  in  procession  about 
the  fields  is  proof  of  similar  dances  for  pleasure.  It  is  no  professional  affair  which 
Vergil  has  in  mind  :  det  motus  incompositos  et  carmina  dicat.  Surely  the  dances 
were  not  danced  by  slaves. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         335 

tory  and  religious  acts  at  a  very  early  stage  of  culture ;  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  the  records  would  preserve  such  a  dance 
only  when  it  had  lost  some  of  its  spontaneous  character,  and 
taken  on  a  ritual  form.  Germanic,  Slavic,  and  Romance  peo- 
ples have  the  communal  dance  surviving  as  a  religious  act ; 
and  it  was  one  of  the  hardest  tasks  for  councils  and  bishops 
to  stop  this  dancing  of  the  congregation  within  the  church 
itself.  Often  they  allowed  it  in  a  modified  form.  As  a  part 
of  ritual,  choristers  still  dance  before  the  altar  of  the  cathe- 
dral at  Seville ;  sixteen  boys  in  blue  and  white  form  "  in  two 
eights,"  facing  each  other,  and  the  priests  kneel  in  a  semi- 
circle round  them.  Then  "an  unseen  orchestra  "  begins  to 
play,  the  boys  put  on  their  hats  and  sing  the  coplas  in  hon- 
our of  the  Virgin  :  — 

O  mi,  O  mi  amada 

Immaculada  !  — 

"to  a  dance  measure."  After  this  they  begin  to  dance,  "still 
singing,"  a  "  kind  of  solemn  minuet."  ^  1  his  is  done  at  the 
feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.  In  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury boys  and  girls  danced  about  an  image  of  Christ  set  upon 
the  altar  of  German  churches,  singing  Christmas  songs,  while 
their  parents  stood  by,  also  singing  and  clapping  their  hands 
in  time  with  the  dance. ^  From  these  good  folk  to  the  Ger- 
man barbarians  "running  in  a  circle"  round  the  goat's  head 
and  "  singing  diabolical  songs,"  as  seen  and  heard  by  Greg- 
ory, ^  is  no  long  step  backward  in  development  if  it  is  in 
chronology.  When  the  children  were  at  last  driven  from  the 
churches,  and  when  the  old  ring-dance  was  at  last  forgotten 
by  their  elders,  even  in  the  fields  and  about  the  fires  of  St. 
John's  Eve,  the  little  ones  made  a  brave  rescue  and   kept  up 

1  Described  by  Mr.   Arthur  S>Tnons  in  Harper's  Monthly  Magazine,  March, 
1901,  p.  503. 

2  Pfannenschmid,  Germ.  Erntef.,  p.  400. 
2  See  above,  p.  301. 


336  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  ritual  in  their  games.  Now  even  these  are  vanishing. 
Outside  of  Europe,  sacred  and  even  national  dances  of  the 
throng  go  this  same  path  of  development  and  decline.  The 
Hebrew  communal  dance  passed  into  traditional  forms ;  ^ 
and  there  are  other  dances,  outside  of  religious  cult,  which 
acquire  a  fixed  form  and  are  passed  down  as  of  tribal  and 
even  national  significance.  One  thinks  of  the  Pyrrhic  dance  ;^ 
indeed,  a  study  of  the  sword-dance  in  all  its  varieties,  and 
from  this  double  point  of  view,  communal  and  national, 
would  be  of  great  interest.  Savages,  as  Donovan  remarked, 
imitate  in  their  dancing  now  the  movement  of  animals,  now 
the  clash  of  arms  in  war,  and  again,  though  not  to  the  extent 
asserted  by  Scherer,  erotic  gestures.^  For  the  second  sort, 
a  gymnastic  motive,  the  sense  of  preparation  and  drill  for 
future  fighting,  and  a  festal  or  reminiscential  motive,  combine 
to  produce  such  an  exercise  as  the  sword-dance,  a  convenient 
name  for  this  group,  although  the  sword  itself  is  not  always 
in  evidence.     Chronology  is  here  of  no  account ;  for  earliest 

1  See  the  suggestive  treatment  of  this  subject  by  Posnett,  Comparative  Litera- 
ture, pp.  117  ff.,  with  his  references  to  Reville  and  Burnouf. 

2  Silius  Itahcus,  naming  the  troops  which  Hannibal  led  out  of  winter  quarters, 
comes  to  the  Gallician  contingent,  and  describes  their  youth  — 

barbara  nunc  patriis  ululantem  carmina  linguis, 

nunc,  pedis  alterno  percussa  verbere  terra, 

ad  numerum  resonas  gaudentem  plaudere  caetras. 

Lemaire  {Bib.  Class.  Lat.,  Sil.  Ital.  Punic,  HI.  345  ff.),  explains  this  as  a  heroic 
ballad  which  the  soldiers  sing,  as  they  dance  and  striiie  their  shields,  when  going 
into  l)attle.  He  refers  to  the  classical  passages  for  this  as  well  as  for  the  Pyrrhic 
dance;  but  see  note  at  the  end  of  this  chapter.  The  perhaps  similar  custom  of 
the  Germans,  noted  by  Tacitus,  is  treated  in  a  masterly  way  by  Miillenhoff.  See 
the  next  note  liut  one. 

'  Pantomime,  as  early  form  of  dance  leading  to  poetry  and  drama,  was  noted 
by  Adam  Smith,  Essays,  p.  151.  For  older  literature,  see  Blankenburg,  ZusatzCy 
I.  153  K.  Erotic  dances  were  exaggerated  by  Scherer  into  the  protoplasm  of  all 
poetry,  Poetik,^'^.  83,  1 14;  and  are  more  moderately  treated  by  Hirn,  Porstudier, 
pp.  88  ff.,  and  Grosse,  Atif.  d.  Kunst,  pp.  21  ff.  It  is  a  developed  art,  of  course, 
that  Lucian  has  in  mind  in  his  treatise  on  the  dance.  See,  however,  Lucian» 
§§  36,  63,  65. 


THE   DIFFERENCING    COMMUNAL    ELEMENTS         337 

records  may  show  a  well-defined  and  almost  national  exercise 
such  as  Tacitus  noted  among  the  Germans,  and  very  late 
examples  can  be  found  of  the  purely  communal  sword-dance, 
with  flyting,  songs,  refrain,  and  rustic  acting,  as  in  the 
Revesby  Sword  Play ;  ^  while  Xenophon  tells  of  a  little 
drama,  enacted  by  soldiers  of  the  ten  thousand,  combining 
the  weapon  dance,  the  imitated  fight,  and  other  elements,  in 
terms  which  could  be  matched  by  many  an  account  given  by 
traveller  or  missionary  of  a  similar  affair  among  quite  sav- 
age tribes.^  It  is  easy  to  see  how  one  of  the  many  paths 
from  this  dance  of  mimicry,  exercise,  and  rhythmic  shouting, 
would  lead  to  the  narrative  song  or  ballad,  and  how  such  a 
ballad  would  long  cleave  to  a  particular  traditional  dance. 
The  Phaeacians  have  a  narrative  song  sung  to  them  as  they 
are  dancing,  and  when  two  dance  alone,  tossing  the  ball,^  "  the 
other  youths  .  .  .  beat  time  " ;  but  an  older  and  more  com- 
munal habit  is  found  in  the  dances  of  the  Faroe  islanders, 
where  the  gestures  and  expression  of  face  show  how  keenly 
the  folk  feel  what  they  sing;*  in  the  Icelandic  rimnr,  narrative 
songs  which  went  with  the  dance  ;  on  the  Cimbrian  peninsula, 
where  ballads  about  the  battle  of  Hemmingstede  were  used 
for  the  same  purpose;  in  scattered  rural  communities^  of 
Europe;   and  among  savage  tribes  the  world  over.     It   has 

1  Manley,  Specimens  of  the  Pre-  Shaksperian  Drama,  I.  296  ff.,  from  the  Folk- 
Lore  Journal,  VII.  338  fF.  The  date  of  the  play  is  1 779.  For  the  Germanic 
sword-dance,  see  Miillenhoff,  Festgabefur  G,  Homeyer, "  Ueber  den  Schwerttanz," 
p.  117.  A  bibliography  of  this  subject  is  printed  in  the  Zeitschr.  f.  Volker- 
psychol.,  etc.,  XIX.  204,  416;  especially  see  p.  223;  and  other  references  may  be 
added  from  Paul's  Gruttdriss,  II.  i.  835,  for  the  German.  For  the  sword-dance  in 
Shetland  noted  by  Scott,  see  Lockhart's  Life,  ed.  1837,  m-  ^62.  For  other  gym- 
nastic plays,  see  the  two  books  of  Groos,  Spiele  der  Thiere  and  Spiele  der  Mensc/ien. 

-  See  Bruchmann,  Poetik,  p.  212. 

3  Skill,  of  course,  and  rivalry  are  early  provocatives  of  art  in  the  dance.  As  to 
ball-playing  as  a  part  of  it,  references  could  be  given  for  all  times  and  climes. 

*  See  Old  English  Ballads,  p.  bcxvi. 

5  Such  as  the  author  of  the  Complaynt  of  ^co/Zawa' watched  at  their  dancing, 
and  noted  the  songs. 


338  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

been  made  clear  to  probation  how  the  narrative  ballad  grew 
out  of  a  tribal  or  communal  dance ;  and  it  is  equally  clear 
that  there  was  an  even  shorter  path  from  dance  to  drama.-^ 

From  this  point  of  view,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  the 
dance  plays  such  a  part  in  the  beginning  of  nearly  every 
national  literature,  not  only  in  the  Dionysian  origins  of  Greek 
drama,  but  in  less  obvious  ways.  The  same  ecstasy,  indeed, 
appears  again  and  again  in  a  kind  of  panic  dance ;  in  the 
summer  of  1374  along  the  Rhine  and  in  the  Netherlands,  and 
again  in  1418  at  Strassburg,  communal  excitement  went  quite 
mad  in  the  St.  John's  or  the  St.  Vitus's  dance,  vast  crowds  of 
men  and  women  leaping  and  shouting,  garlanded,  singing,  as 
they  reeled,  a  refrain  which  might  belong  to  the  usual  dances 
of  St.  John's  Eve  :  — 

Here  Sent  Johan,  so,  so, 
Vrisch  ind  vro, 
Here  Sent  Johan  ! 

until  they  fell  exhausted,  but  still  raving.^  These  panic 
dances  reproduce  in  some  features  the  mad  dance  of  maenads 
and  all  that  "  wild  religious  excitement,"  that  "  Bacchic  ec- 
stasy," which  lay  behind  the  Hellenic  drama,  and  anticipate 
as  mad  a  dance  of  as  wild  an  ecstasy,  though  not  religious, 
when  the  mob  of  Paris  dances  the  carmagnole  to  its  own  sing- 
ing ;  but  all  this  belongs  to  the  pathological  side  of  the  case, 
and  one  turns  to  the  harvest-field,  and  to  the  village  oak, 
where  merry  dances  often  set  a  rhythm  heard  in  later  and 
nobler  verse.  Not  long  ago,  poetry  of  every  kind  was 
thought  to  start  in  some  religious  rite,  and  a  god  or  goddess 
lay  hid  under  the  most  harmless  rime  of  the  yokel ;  of  late, 
however,  a  wholesome   tendency  has   prevailed  to  stop  the 

1  See  below,  Chap.  VII. 

2  See  Uhland,  Kl.  Schr.,  III.  399  ff.,  and  484  ff.,  who  gives  other  well-known 
instances  of  this  panic  dance,  as  well  as  the  tarantella  of  Italy.  The  shaman,  of 
course,  even  among  a  tribe  as  low  as  the  Veddahs,  dances  himself  into  a  fit. 


I 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         339 

search  of  sky  and  storm-cloud  and  other  far-away  haunts  for 
an  explanation  of  the  rustic  dance  and  of  the  rustic  refrain. 
On  one  hand,  the  chase,  war,  whatever  concerned  the  routine 
of  nomadic  life,  and  on  the  other  hand,  among  agricultural 
folk,  the  round  of  seedtime  and  harvest,  days  of  plenty  or  of 
want,  and  in  both  cases,  the  common  joys  and  sorrows  of  man- 
kind, are  now  thought  to  be  a  better  reason  for  communal 
dance  and  song.  Primitive  man  did  not  go  about  with  his 
eyes  fixed  upon  the  heavens ;  and  it  is  not  the  goddess  of 
spring  and  sunshine  transferred  to  those  harvested  crops  as 
signs  of  her  presence  which  explains  a  Nerthus  or  a  Ceres,  but 
rather  a  slow  inference  from  local  delight  in  harvest  up  to  a 
great  feast  of  gathered  and  related  tribes,  involving  wider 
ideas  of  divinity  and  arriving  by  easy  stages  at  the  abstrac- 
tion of  one  beneficent  deity  sending  out  her  largess  of  sun  and 
quickening  showers.  The  dance,  then,  with  nomadic  tribes 
was  a  triumph,  an  outburst  of  communal  elation,  dealing  in 
its  mimicry  with  scenes  of  the  war  or  hunt,  and  cadenced  by 
shout  and  song  that  echoed  a  clash  of  arms ;  with  the  agri- 
cultural community  it  was  a  harvest-home,  with  recapitulation 
of  the  rural  year,  imitated  acts  of  sowing,  planting,  watching, 
reaping,  storing,  which  survive  in  some  sort  to  this  day.  In 
both  kinds  of  life,  nomadic  and  agricultural,  the  dance  was  an 
essential  part  of  such  rites  as  the  wedding  and  the  funeral, 
and  is  still  considered  in  this  way  by  peasants  in  remoter 
Europe.  Thus  in  Dalmatia  and  Montenegro,^  the  kollo,  that 
is,  circle,  "  the  figure  of  all  their  dances,  though  the  steps  dif- 
fer," is  danced  at  weddings.  "Twelve  or  thirteen  women 
.  .  .  danced  in  a  circle,  singing  a  slow  and  rather  plaintive 
song  ,  .  .  while  waiting  for  the  bride.  ...  In  the  mean- 
time, the  men  .  .  .  walked  in  procession  to  the  court  before 
the  church  door,  and  danced  in  a  circle."  Evidence  of  this 
sort  is  everywhere ;   it  has  been  studied  under  the  refrain ; 

1  See  book  of  this  title  by  Sir  J.  G.  Wilkinson,  London,  1848,  I.  399. 


340  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

but  the  festal  idea  may  be  repeated  here  in  comment  on  the 
meaning  of  our  old  English  word  and  suffix  lac,  and  the  re- 
lated Gothic  laiks}  German  leich,  originally  the  combination 
of  word,  song,  and  dance  —  or  march  —  in  one  communal 
act,2  with  an  easy  transition  into  the  idea  of  battle,  the  "  play 
of  spears,"  where,  indeed,  this  communal  act  always  served  as 
prelude,  as  well  as  into  the  idea  of  feast,  ceremony,  merriment. 
A  festal  song  and  dance  after  the  fight,  easily  turned  into 
ritual  and  thanksgiving  to  the  gods,  but  once  mere  fighting 
the  battle  over  again,  was  called  in  Norse  the  sigrleikr."^ 
Further  philology  would  not  be  in  place ;  enough  that  the 
earliest  songs  and  poetry  of  Europe  appear  everywhere  hand 
in  hand  with  the  dance,'*  and  that  this  dance  is  partly  the  tri- 
umph of  victorious  war,  partly  a  triumph  of  peace  and  plenty, 
always,  however,  a  festal  and  communal  affair. 

In  considering  this  communal  dance  of  Europe,  one  finds 
that  it  is  practically  inseparable  from  song,  and  the  song  is 
mainly  sung  by  those  who  dance.  In  modern  Greece,  even, 
Fauriel  ^  found  that  "  every  new  dance  was  the  result  of  a 
new  song,  of  which  it  formed  the  mimicry  ;  it  was  never 
danced  without  this  song,  and  fell  with  it  into  oblivion."  A 
study  of  the  refrain  showed  how  close  this  bond  between  song 
and  dance  must  have  been ;  and  one  sees  how  slowly  and 
reluctantly  the  separation  takes  place,  most  reluctantly,  of 
course,  in  the  games  of  children.  It  must  also  be  borne  in 
mind  that  dancing  by  pairs  is  of  comparatively  recent  date ; 
Neocorus,  one  will  remember,  says  it  was  unknown  among 

1  It  translates  "  dance  "  in  Luke  xv.  25. 

2  See  Kogel,  Gesck.  d.  deutsch.  Lit.,  pp.  7  ff. 

^  SigeleoS  in  Anglo-Saxon,  sung  after  a  victory,  was  doubtless  the  same  thing. 
Kogel  notes  that  leikr,  leik,  in  Norwegian  dialects  down  to  this  day,  means  both 
"  war  "  and  "  dance  ";  and  he  conjectures  that  wineldc,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  goes  back 
to  an  originally  erotic  dance,  as  it  may  go  forward  to  a  children's  "  kissing-game." 

*  Wolf,  Lais,  pp.  18,  183  i.y  puts  too  much  stress  on  the  singing  of  church 
music,  though  he  concedes  popular  origins;  p.  22. 

''  Work  quoted,  p.  cxvii. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         341 

his  peasant  neighbours  between  the  German  ocean  and  the 
Baltic  until  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  while  Blad6 
makes  this  way  of  dancing  a  stranger  to  the  Gascon  country- 
folk as  late  as  seventy  years  ago.  What  they  knew  and  prac- 
tised was  the  old  round,  danced  once  to  the  songs  of  the 
dancers,  but  now  dominated  more  and  more  by  instruments ;  ^ 
the  song,  when  used,  is  led  by  a  soloist  who  improvises  a  line 
or  so  which  is  repeated  by  the  dancers  in  chorus,  with  a  re- 
frain for  all  stanzas.  This  round,  of  course,  is  the  carole  "^  of 
Romance  literature,  known  later  as  the  branlc,  a  dance  or 
march  of  many,  hand  in  hand,  with  chorus  or  refrain  to  time 
the  steps  ;  ^  it  was  the  main  amusement  of  aristocratic  folk,  but 
derived  directly  from  popular  usage.  Such  an  aristocratic 
dance  is  described  in  the  Romaimt  of  the  Rose}    Dante  refers^ 

^  Blade,  Poesies  Populaires  de  la  Gascogne  (Vol.  III.  is  devoted  entirely  to 
songs  for  the  dance),  III.  i.  ff.  "  En  general  on  ne  danse  aux  chansons  que  faute  de 
mieux,"  although  even  now,  at  times,  "  they  bid  the  music  cease,  and  dance  to  the 
sound  of  their  own  voices."     The  dancing  is  literally  a  round,  a  circle. 

2  See  Wolfs  note,  Lais,  pp.  185  f.  On  this  carole  or  ronde,  danced  mainly  by 
women,  but  now  and  then  by  men  and  women,  see  Jeanroy's  chapiter,  already 
quoted,  and  the  additional  suggestions  of  M.  Gaston  Paris,  Origines  d.  I.  Poes. 
Lyr.,  pp.  44  ff.,  really  a  review  of  Jeanroy's  book.  "  Ce  qui  caracterisait  surtout  les 
caroles,  c'etait  le  chant  qui  les  accompagnait,"  says  M.  Paris.  The  only  use  of 
instruments,  and  these  very  simple,  was  to  mark  the  rhythm.  Dancers  turned  to 
the  left. 

^  An  early  reference,  from  "  Ruodlieb,"  may  be  addel  to  show  the  connection 
of  dance  and  song;  the  passage  occurs  in  a  description  of  the  dancing  bears  (III. 
84  ff.,  ed.  Grimm-Schmeller,  Lat.  Ged.  des  X.  u.  XI.  Jhrh.,  p.  144)  :  — 

cum  plebs  altisonam  fecit  gyrando  choream, 

accurrunt  et  se  mulieribus  applicuere, 

quae  gracili  voce  cecinerunt  deliciose, 

insertisque  suis  harum  manibus  speciosis 

erecti  calcant  .  .  . 
The  bears  dance,  then,  along  with  the  singing  and  dancing  women  ;  Grimm  calls 
them  spielweiber,  and  quotes  an  ecclesiastical  prohibition  {ibid.,  p.  xv) ;   but  part 
of  the  description,  witness  the  plebs,  will  pass  for  a  communal  dance. 

*  In  the  translation  ascribed  to  Chaucer,  w.  759  ff.,  "Tha  myghtist  thou 
karoles  sane,"  etc. 

5  De  vulg.  Eloq.,  II.  iii.  See  note  in  Howell's  translation,  London,  1S90. 
Crescimbeni.  PTstoria  della  volgar  Poesia,  Yex\ez.,  1731  (written  in  1697),  quotes, 


342  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

to  the  practise  of  singing  with  the  dance ;  and  if  we  had  his 
chapter  on  the  ballata,  we  should  have  riches.  On  the  dance- 
song  of  these  Romance  nations,  and  its  absolutely  communal 
origin,  enough  has  been  quoted  already  from  such  authors  as 
Wolf  and  Jeanroy;  and  it  would  be  waste  of  time  to  heap  up 
evidence  of  the  English  ballad  ^  as  it  was  danced  in  Eliza- 
bethan fields,  and  when  the  youth  went  out  to  "  mix  their 
songs  and  dances  in  the  wood."  Dances  of  this  sort  we  have 
already  noted  not  only  among  shepherds,  but  in  the  Eliza- 
bethan theatre ;  besides  the  refrains  of  labour  and  merriment 
to  which  the  actors  danced,  ballads  were  in  demand.  A  good 
instance  is  in  the  old  play  of  Like  Wil  to  Like^  where  Nichol 
Newfangle,  the  Devil,  and  Tom  Collier  are  on  the  stage. 
Says  Nichol,  — 

Godfather,  wilt  thou  daunce  a  little  before  ye  go  home  to  hell  ?  .  .  . 
Then,  godfather,  name  what  the  daunce  shall  be. 

"  Tom  Collar  of  Croydon  hath  solde  his  cole." 

Why,  then,  haue  at  it  by  my  father's  soule. 

[Nichol  Newfangle  must  have  a  gittorn  or  some  other  instrument  (if  it 
may  bee),  but  if  hee  haue  not,  they  must  daunce  about  the  place  all  three, 
and  sing  this  song  that  followeth,  which  must  bee  doon  also  althoug  they 
haue  an  instrumenth.] 

And  the  song  follows.  Jigs  were  songs,  largely  improvised, 
and  sung  by  actors  as  they  danced ;  they  came  after  the 
play.^      It  was  the  fiddle,  says  Mr.  Baring-Gould,^  "which 

though  in  disapproval,  Minturno  for  the  primacy  of  ballate  (p.  148):  "  Ijallads," 
says  M.,  because  "  si  cantavano  ballando,"  which  is  the  root  of  the  matter. 

1  It  has  been  repeatedly  noticed  that  older  English  dances  are  known  by  the 
ballads  sung  to  them.  Even  some  of  the  tragic  ballads  were  used  for  the  dance; 
but  one  must  think  of  gay  little  songs  and  refrains  as  staple  for  the  merry  rounds; 
nothing  else  will  fit  the  seasons  when  "  maydes  daunce  in  a  ring." 

■^  3'',  Bodley  copy  of  1568.  See  also  the  refrain  for  a  dance  in  the  Four  Ele- 
ments, above,  p.  322. 

3  Sec  Kind-IIarts  Dreame,  ed.  Rimbault,  Percy  Soc,  1841,  p.  38,  and  note, 

P-  79- 

*  English  Minsirelsie,  I.,  p.  ix. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS         343 

banished  the  ballad  as  a  song-accompaniment  to  a  dance. 
Nevertheless,  as  a  very  aged  fiddler  told  me.  .  .  in  his  early- 
days  the  lads  and  maids  always  sang  whilst  dancing  to 
his  music."  On  the  stage  this  substitution  was  more  im- 
mediate and  thorough ;  so  that  in  the  days  of  George  II, 
when  Nancy  Dawson  "  produced  the  novelty  of  singing  as 
she  danced,"  she  took  the  town  by  storm ;  though  one  may 
conjecture  that  it  was  the  survival,  not  the  "novelty,"^  in 
the  case  which  thus  aided  her  charm  as  a  woman  and  her 
grace  as  a  dancer.  For  rural  England,  like  rural  Europe, 
showed  reluctance  enough  in  giving  up  the  good  old  way ; 
a  Scottish  parson,  moreover,  writing  in  1793,  tells  of  a  large 
stone,  set  up  in  one  of  the  islands,  about  which  he  saw  "  fifty 
of  the  inhabitants "  gathered  on  the  first  day  of  the  year, 
and  "  dancing  in  the  moonlight "  with  no  other  music  than 
their  own  singing.^  About  such  stones,  but  by  preference 
about  the  village  linden,^  folk  danced  to  their  own  singing 
in  Germany  down  to  modern  times ;  and  as  the  dance  was 
an  even  movement  in  a  ring,  the  dancers  hand  in  hand,  it 
was  quite  possible  for  them  to  sing  the  ballads  which  seem 
to  us  grotesquely  unfit  for  the  lively  springing  of  single 
performers  as  well  as  for  the  rapidly  gliding  couples.  Leap- 
ing, and  livelier  motions  generally,  followed  the  dance  in  a 
ring ;  but  it  was  to  the  latter  that  ballads  were  sung  and  in 
the  first  instance  composed.*  The  dances  which  go  mainly 
to  a  refrain  represent  of  course  an  older  stage  than  those 

1  In  1767  a  "young  lady  from  Scotland"  sang  as  she  danced,  at  the  royal 
theatre  in  Copenhagen;  but  there,  too,  in  1726,  a  Stockholm  dancing-girl  had 
done  the  same  thing.  "  Novelty  "  is  not  the  word.  See  Steenstrup,  Vore  Folkev., 
pp.  8  f. 

-  Brand,  "New  Year's  Day." 

^  Mannhardt,  Baumkultus,  in  many  places;  Pfannenschmid,  Germ.  Erntej., 
pp.  271  ff.,  580  ff.  For  love-songs  and  the  dance,  Uhland,  III.  391  ff.,  and  notes, 
471,  with  valuable  account  of  the  manner  of  dancing,  and  of  the  leader,  the  vore- 
singen  and  the  voretanzen. 

^  See  Bohme,  Altd.  Liederb.,  p.  xxxv. 


344 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 


which  are  danced  to  a  ballad,  to  a  narrative  song ;  the  early 
dance  knows  only  present  action,  and  exhorts  or  describes, 
as  in  the  Flemish  dances  ^  now  mainly  relegated  to  children. 
As  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  is  so  fond  of  reminding  his  readers, 
this  is  a  merry,  dancing  world  no  more ;  even  youth  can 
hardly  make  shift  "  to  revel  in  the  general  situation  "  as  all 
men  used  to  do.  WeltscJmierz  is  to  blame,  no  doubt,  and 
there  is  Mr.  Baring-Gould's  fiddle,  which  has  done  a  deal  of 
mischief.  Rivals  to  the  human  voice,  successful  rivals, 
were  early  at  the  dance,  —  harp,  lyre,  pipe,  what  not.  South 
Sea  islanders  were  fain,  not  of  these,  but  of  the  drum. 
With  the  dominant  note  of  alien  music  came  a  desire  to 
break  up  the  ring,  to  dance  in  pairs,  or  even  to  listen  and 
look  on.  Meddlesome  bishops  and  officials  of  every  sort 
were  bound  to  destroy  this  communal  dance  as  a  place 
of  scandal ;  and  we  have  seen  how  the  chimney  and  the 
clean,  warm  fireside  and  the  lamp  drew  sober  folk  from  the 
village  dances  and  left  these  to  the  baser  element.  One  can 
take  quite  seriously  that  petition  ^  of  the  would-be  peasant 
to  restore  legal  sanction  to  the  village  dance ;  and  one  is 
interested  to  hear  the  petitioner  complain  that  it  is  the 
violin  now  where  once  was  the  bagpipe, — and  once,  too, 
he  might  have  added,  the  echoing  refrain.  No,  the  dance 
as  well  as  the  dancing  song,  the  ballad  proper,  is  going  out 
of  date ;  ^  and  not  only  the  dance  in  this  communal  and 
social  meaning,  but  the  very  fact  of  rhythm,  which  is  the 
soul  of  the  dance.  Children  play  these  games  less  and  less, 
although  the  kindergarten  makes  some  stand  in  the  matter  ; 

'  '  T  Boertje,  Coussemaker,  pp.  329  f.,  and  V  Patertje,  already  quoted. 

2  Petition  pour  des  Villageois  que  Von  empeche  de  danser.  Par  Paul-Louis 
Courier,  Vigneron,  .  .  .  Paris,  1822,  addressed  to  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
asiting  that  the  folk  of  Azai  may  dance  on  Sundays  "sur  le  place  de  leur  com- 
mune." Despite  the  mystification,  there  is  some  serious  intent  behind  this 
fooling. 

'^  In  Germany  itself:  cf.  Meyer,  Volkskunde,  pp.  158,  160,  163. 


THE   DIFFERENCING   COMMUNAL   ELEMENTS        345 

and  even  in  music,  as  Biicher  ^  points  out  in  those  pages  to 
which  we  have  so  often  referred,  teachers  and  artists  are  fain 
to  give  rhythm  an  ancillary  place  and  put  melody,  harmony, 
in  the  foreground.  One  feels  little  displeasure,  says  Biicher, 
at  the  sight  of  unrhythmic  movements ;  and  what  would  be 
said  of  an  orator  who,  like  his  Athenian  brother,  should  ad- 
dress a  political  assembly  as  his  "fellow  dancers"  ?  But  the 
decline  set  in  early ;  even  in  Sir  Thomas  Elyot's  day ,2 
dancing  is  "  that  exercise  whiche  of  the  more  parte  of 
sadde  men  "  —  serious  folk,  that  is  —  "  is  so  litle  estimed." 
So,  too,  in  imperial  Rome.  When  the  Romans  hired 
mimes  to  dance  for  them,  some  lover  of  the  old  ways 
might  have  said  of  the  communal  dance,  expression  of 
social  union  and  social  equality  and  the  strong,  compact 
state,  what  the  stern  old  orator  said  of  his  profession  when 
he  first  heard  hired  applause  in  the  courts  of  law  :  ccntnmviri, 
hoc  artificium  periit,  —  "judges,  oratory  is  doomed  !  "  In  both 
cases  one  is  dealing  with  the  decline  of  communal  force  and 
the  growth  of  individual  power. 

Our  business,  however,  is  with  the  past.  It  is  clear  that 
movements  of  labour,  particularly  in  a  reminiscent  festal 
act,  and  movements  of  the  communal  dance,  furnished  the 
raw  material  of  poetry.  In  all  cases  the  primitive  dance, 
or  what  seems  to  come  nearest  to  that  state  of  the  art,  is 
a  dance  of  masses  of  men  for  one  purpose  and  to  one  exact 
rhythm.^  Equal  sets  of  movements  gave  the  verse,  and  sets 
of  these  sets  gave  in  time  the  strophe.     Communal  interest, 


'  Arbeit  u.  Rhythmus,  pp.  103  f. 

-  See  note,  end  of  chapter. 

^  Grosse,  Anf.  d.  Kunst,  p.  218;  Donovan,  Lyre  to  Muse,  pp.  91,  127  ff.; 
Jacobowski,  Anfdnge  d.  Poesie,  p.  127.  This  author's  discussion  of  circle  and 
straight  line,  as  of  women  and  of  men  in  the  dance,  and  of  other  formations,  is  a 
bit  fanciful  although  interesting  and  suggestive.  See,  too,  Donovan  on  the  ring 
of  folk  (choral)  about  a  centre  of  interest,  —  altar  or  the  like.  Work  quoted, 
p.  204. 


346  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

resulting  in  the  communal  expression,  added  contents  to  form ; 
and  shout,  movement,  cadence,  are  all  born  of  this  absolutely 
social  and  communal  impulse.  To  use  the  good  old  word, 
here  is  the  poetry  of  nature  ;  facing  this  communal  material, 
what  are  we  to  say  of  the  changes  wrought  upon  it  by 
individual  art  ?  ^ 

1  The  development  of  the  dance  into  different  kinds  of  poetry  is  foreshadowed 
by  many  of  the  older  writers,  although  the  first  really  comparative  treatment  of  the 
subject  must  be  assigned  to  A.  W.  Schlegel  in  the  lectures  at  Berlin  a  century  ago. 
Herder  has  some  valuable  remarks  on  the  subject  in  his  early  essay  Vom  Geist  der 
ebr'dischen  Poesie,  following,  of  course,  many  hints  of  Lowth.  Two  hundred  years 
ago,  Burette,  a  really  learned  writer,  drew  up  his  "  Memoire  pour  servir  a  I'His- 
toire  de  la  Danse  des  Anciens,"  published  in  the  Mem.,  Acad,  of  Inscript.,  etc.,  I. 
93  ff.,  Paris,  1 71 7.  Movement  and  imitation  caused  the  dance,  which  is  "nearly 
as  old  as  man,"  and  sprang  from  joy.  Cadence  is  the  mainspring;  avoid,  he 
says,  Lucian's  prattle  about  the  stars.  Wedding,  festival,  vintage,  harvest,  —  look 
to  these,  says  Burette,  in  quite  modern  spirit,  for  the  origins  of  the  dance.  He 
traces  metres  to  the  rhythm  of  songs  sung  by  the  dancers.  Another  article  of 
this  writer  investigates  ball-playing,  often  combined  with  dance  and  song. 
Another  writer  on  the  dance  was  John  Spencer,  D.D.,  master  of  Corpus  Christi 
College  (1630-1693),  the  founder  of  the  science  of  comparative  religions;  his 
"  Dissertatio  de  Saltandi  Ritu,"  is  printed  in  the  Thesaurus  Antiquitat.  Sacrar. 
complectens  selectissitna  darissimorum  Virorum  Opuscula  in  quibus  Veterum 
Hebraeorum  Mores,  Leges,  etc.,  illuslrantur.  Vol.  XXXII.,  Venet.,  1767.  Spencer 
studies  the  dance  of  the  Hebrews,  and  his  references  are  valuable;  he  is  com- 
parative, and  uses  dances  of  modern  Turks  to  illustrate  his  subject.  Hebrews 
got  some  of  their  festal  dances  from  heathen,  —  the  saltatiojies  promiscuas ;  for 
erotic  dances  he  thinks  to  have  been  early  and  everywhere.  For  a  man  of  his 
date,  he  concludes  very  boldly  "  probabilius  est,  sacras  choreas  agendi  morem,  ex 
antiquissimo  gentium  usu  primitus  oriundum,"  and  so  came  to  the  Hebrews.  The 
festal  dances,  where  Jews  bore  about  branches  and  sang  a  choral  full  of  repetitions 
and  with  a  constant  refrain,  he  compares  with  pagan  affairs  of  the  sort;  the  paan 
is  compared  with  refrains  like  Hallel  and  Ilosannah.  In  fine,  this  is  sharp,  clear, 
comparative  work,  and  good  reading  still.  From  Joannis  Meursi  Orchestra  sive 
de  Saltationibus  Veterum  .  .  .  Lugd.  Batav.,  1618,  not  much  is  to  be  learned 
except  a  list  (alphabetical)  of  the  old  dances,  with  references  to  the  classic  pas- 
sages. Most  .of  the  articles  are  short,  but  the  Pyrrhic  Dance  has  twelve  pages. 
An  early  essay  on  dancing,  with  considerable  scope  for  its  time,  is  inserted  in 
Elyot's  Governour,  edited  by  Croft,  London,  1880,  from  the  edition  of  1 53 1,  I. 
202  ff.     Elyot  seems  to  be  the  first  Englishman  who  wrote  about  the  art. 


CHAPTER  VI 

SCIENCE   AND    COMMUNAL   POETRY 

We  have  Dr.  Johnson's  word  for  it  that  one  does  well  "to 
see  great  works  in  their  seminal  state,  pregnant  with  latent 
possibilities  of  excellence ;  nor  could  there  be  any  more 
delightful  entertainment  than  to  trace  their  gradual  growth 
and  expansion."  So  science  came  to  think;  and  all  the 
works  of  nature  and  of  man  have  been  treated  in  this  spirit 
to  the  convincing  of  sane  minds  everywhere,  except  in  the 
domain  of  poetry.  There  one  still  cHngs  to  a  paradise  and  a 
perfect  poet  at  the  start,  —  perfect,  that  is,  because  he  had 
all  the  functions  and  privileges  and  opportunities  of  the 
latter-day  bard,  and  stood  to  his  public  as  a  poet  stands  to 
the  public  of  this  age.  A  study  of  facts,  records  as  well  as  sur- 
vivals, leads  us  to  no  such  perfect  primitive  bard  ;  at  the  end 
of  the  path  we  see  no  dignified  old  gentleman  in  flowing  robe, 
with  a  long  white  beard,  upturned  eyes,  and  a  harp  clasped  to 
his  bosom,  but  rather  a  ring  of  savages  dancing  uncouthly  to 
the  sound  of  their  own  voices  in  a  rhythmic  but  inharmonious 
chant.  This,  however,  is  only  saying  that  poetry,  like  all 
human  institutions,  like  the  earth  itself,  goes  back  to  rude 
and  barren  beginnings ;  and  the  lowest  stratum  of  poetry  to 
which  one  can  come  either  by  sight  or  by  inference  is  only  what 
one  ought  to  expect  from  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  applica- 
ble in  this  case  as  in  any  other  case.  With  a  sense  not 
intended  by  Browning,  "rock's  the  song-soil  rather,"  and 
even  fossil  signs  of  life  are  few.  But  it  is  precisely  here  that 
Johnson's  unconscious  praise  of  these  studies  should  be  borne 

347 


348  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

in  mind.  Not  the  bard  come  down  from  Olympus,  with 
majesty  in  his  mien  and  the  hght  of  divine  song  shed  about 
him,  singing  to  his  rapt  hearers  of  the  deep  things  of  Hfe,  is 
the  nobler  view  :  nobler  by  far  is  the  sight  of  those  little 
groups  gathered  on  the  marches  that  lay  between  the  old 
beast  and  the  new  man,  facing  inexorable  powers  which  had 
crushed  out  life  upon  life  before,  and  whole  systems  of  life ; 
dimly  conscious  of  a  force  that  treads  down  the  individual  and 
dooms  the  solitary  to  defeat ;  dimly  conscious,  too,  of  the  resist- 
ing power  that  lies  in  coherence,  union,  common  front  in  a 
common  cause ;  marshalled  by  the  instinct  of  kind  into  a 
tentative  confederation  of  single  resources ;  and  so  begin- 
ning the  long  battle  which  humanity  is  still  waging  against 
foes  unseen  as  well  as  seen.  The  first  cry  of  emotional  con- 
sent along  with  the  consenting  step,  the  cry  that  remembered 
a  triumph  found  in  instinctive  common  action,  and  felt  itself 
to  be  prophetic  of  a  triumph  yet  to  come ;  this  concerted  step 
and  shout  which  seemed  the  expression  of  concerted  purpose, 
of  communal  will,  force,  effectiveness,  has  more  in  it  even  for 
the  man  of  sentiment  than  can  be  found  in  any  flight  of 
poetry  in  later  time.  But  we  are  not  seeking  sentiment  in 
the  case ;  and  having  come  in  this  rude  dance  and  song,  so  it 
would  seem,  to  the  beginnings  of  poetry,  we  ask  what  was  the 
beginning  of  this  beginning.  If  one  must  have  a  formula 
for  the  process,  it  need  not  be  in  those  intolerant  terms  of 
personal  initiative  and  gregarious  imitation  upon  which 
M.  Tarde  insists  so  strenuously,  but  rather  in  the  mild  and 
quite  as  scientific  terms  of  consent,  the  consent  of  instinctive 
individual  gestures  and  sounds  due  to  the  perception  by  a 
group  of  human  beings  that  common  action  makes  unity  out  of 
diversity.  Art  is  of  social  origin  ;  that  is  the  thesis  of  Guyau 
in  his  well-known  book ;  and  the  social  sense  precedes  any 
relation  of  ma.ster  and  pupil,  leader  and  followers.  It  is 
overwhelmingly  probable  that  rhythm,  the  simplest  form  of 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  349 

social  consent,  was  the  earliest  form  of  a  discovery  which 
made  social  progress  possible.  Still,  this  probability  must 
not  be  taken  for  granted. 

The  question,  like  the  democratic  thought  of  a  century  and 
more  ago,  has  an  outer  and  an  inner  circle.^  For  the  latter, 
let  us  ask  whether  poetry,  queen  of  the  arts,  is  an  art  in  the 
sense  of  something  invented  by  the  artist,  not  only  in  details, 
but  in  essence.  The  arts  of  Hfe  belong  to  the  artist ;  but  is 
the  artist  anterior  in  every  way  to  his  art.-*  Is  there  no  spon- 
taneous, instinctive  background  ?  In  the  first  place,  one  must 
guard  against  a  fallacy  of  terms.  The  invention  of  a  tool, 
for  example,  even  though  it  be  "organic  projection,"  is  differ- 
ent in  kind  from  the  invention  of  a  poem,  which,  by  the  prin- 
ciples of  aesthetic,  has  no  one  practical  end  in  view,  —  for 
theory,  at  least ;  in  reality,  the  inventor  of  a  poem  nowadays 
has  a  practical  end  in  view,  the  sale  of  his  verse,  and  Scherer 
carried  this  commercial  idea  back  to  the  very  origins,  set- 
ting up  a  primitive  literary  market,  with  supply  and  demand, 
poet  and  public,  bargains,  sales,  entertainer  and  audience, 
on  the  very  tree-platform  of  our  hairy  ancestors.  But  Scherer 
fell  into  absurdities.  Gigadibs  the  literary  man  does  not 
thrive  in  those  regions ;  and  one  cannot  reduce  the  primitive 
choral  to  terms  of  artist,  invention,  public,  sale.  If  anything 
has  been  made  clear  in  preceding  pages  of  this  book,  if  any- 
thing can  be  made  clear  in  the  study  of  improvisation  about 
to  follow,  if  there  is  any  certain  curve  of  evolution  in  the 
course  of  poetry,  it  is  that  the  passive  element,  the  audience, 
the  receptive  public,  disappears  inevitably  as  one  recedes 
from  conditions  of  the  present  time,  and  that  the  throng  as  a 
productive  active  body  assumes  more  and  more  the  functions 
now  regarded  as  belonging  almost  exclusively  to  the  individ- 
ual. Invention  itself  has  been  reduced  to  a  convenient  absurd- 
ity, for  this  very  article  of  rhythm,  by  M.  Kawczynski,  in  his 
1  See  above,  p.  128. 


350  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

essay  on  rhythmic  origins.^  Nobody  denies  that  an  Alcaeus 
may  invent  an  Alcaic  strophe,^  that  another  master  may  hit 
upon  the  elegiac  couplet ;  but  this  vivacious  essay  declares 
that  rhythm  itself  was  invented  by  some  thoughtful  bene- 
factor of  the  race,  some  genius  of  prehistoric  times.  A  book 
published  in  the  same  year,  the  y^stlictics  of  Movement^  by 
M.  Souriau,^  had  made  temperate  protest  against  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer's  doctrine^  of  the  universality  of  rhythm  in  the  realm 
of  nature,  and  had  asserted  that  rhythm,  exceptional  in  nature, 
is  nevertheless  "the  constant  law  of  muscular  movements," 
and  not  the  result  of  will.  But  this  spontaneity  of  rhythm  in 
the  motion  and  muscular  exertion  of  man,  this  tendency  in 
each  of  our  motor  organs  "  to  adopt  a  fixed  rhythm  which 
becomes  its  normal  movement,"  is  precisely  what  M.  Kaw- 
czynski  will  not  allow  ;  he  is  bent  upon  banishing  "  the  false 
system  of  spontaneity  "  from  its  last  place  of  refuge  and  will 
hound  it  off  the  face  of  the  earth.  Not  only  was  this  or  that 
dance  invented,  this  or  that  march  and  walk  ;  dancing,  march- 
ing, leaping,  yes,  walking,  are  inventions  all.  This  is  very 
clear  language  of  M.  Kawczynski,  but  it  is  a  trifle  too  clear ; 
one  asks  for  a  bill  of  particulars,  — first  for  an  explanation  of 
the  inventive  process,  and  secondly  for  an  account  of  the  imi- 
tation ;  and  here  one  meets  difficulties.  The  individual  mind 
plays  about  general  instincts,  modifies  them,  develops  them 
into  a  thousand  forms,  precisely  as  it  does  with  the  raw  mate- 
rial of  nature.  It  invents  a  dance  as  modification  of  the  gen- 
eral instinct  to  dance ;  it  invents  the  steam-engine,  but  is  not 
yet  credited  with  inventing  steam  and  iron.     So  one  easily 

1  Essai  Comparatif  sur  V  Origine  et  VlJistoire  des  Rythmes,  Paris,  1889. 

2  Even  this  may  be  questioned  in  a  literal  sense.  "  Formen,"  says  Usener, 
Aligriechischer  Versbau,  p.  iii,"werden  nicht  geschaffen,  sondern  sie  entstehen 
und  wachscn.  Der  schopferische  Kiinstler  erzeugt  sie  nicht,  sondern  bildet  das 
Ueberkommene  vcredelnd  um."  He  is  speaking  of  the  popular  four-accent  verse 
found  in  so  many  languages. 

"  U Esthetique  du  Mouvement,  Paris,  1889,  Cap.  iv.     See  pp.  54,  65. 
^  In  the  Eir St  Principles. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL  POETRY  351 

understands  the  invention  of  a  distinct  song ;  but  what  of 
singing  ?  Or  say  of  breathing  ?  The  Dogberry  who  says 
that  these  things  come  by  nature,  and  asks  how  they  could 
come  by  art,  is  pained  to  find  the  advocate  of  invention  wrap- 
ping himself  in  a  cloak  of  biological  mystery  not  unlike  the 
theological  garment  donned,  under  similar  questions,  by  Jacob 
Grimm  himself.  We  shall  see  that  in  the  outer  circle  this  ques- 
tion is  answered  by  M.  Tarde  with  a  reference  to  the  cell ; 
ultimate  individual  invention  is  an  affair  of  the  individual  cell ; 
while  the  process  itself  is  a  mystery,  described  only  in  the 
most  modest  and  euphemistic  hints,  and  to  stare  at  it  would 
be  the  part  of  peeping  Tom.  M.  Kawczynski  makes  no  effort 
to  explain  invention,  but  simply  asserts  it ;  and  although  imita- 
tion is  a  clearer  case,  yet  even  here  he  says  things  which  are 
not  good  for  the  interests  of  his  theory.  He  is  safe  so  long 
as  he  keeps  to  general  terms  and  describes  all  literature  as 
a  gigantic  system  of  borrowings,  —  German  from  Roman, 
Roman  from  Greek,  Greek  from  Egyptian  mayhap,  and 
Egyptian  from  creditors  unknown,  all  imitation,  with  here 
and  there  a  bit  of  invention  going  on  decently  behind  closed 
doors.  But  M.  Kawczynski  dares  too  much,  and  blunders  in 
the  particular  case.  A  witness  should  be  taken  from  the  box 
when  he  tries  to  help  his  cause  by  making  German  Siegfried 
an  imitated  compound  of  Jason,  Achilles,  and  Perseus ;  by 
naming  Otfried  as  the  founder  of  really  Germanic  literature  ; 
by  making  alliteration  in  Norse  an  imitation  of  German, 
which  got  it  from  Anglo-Saxons,  who  got  it  from  the  Irish, 
who  got  it  from  the  Latin ;  and  by  calling  Germanic  verse 
itself  an  imitation  of  the  classic  hexameter.^  "  Historic  influ- 
ences," one  is  told,  "  are  stronger  than  the  natural  and  proper 
gifts  of  any  people  " ;  but  are  not  natural  and  proper  gifts 
themselves  the  strongest  of  historic  influences  ?  This  ques- 
tion is  worth  a  glance  by  the  way. 

^  Essai,  pp.  102,  104. 


352  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

No  one  denies  the  great  part  played  in  poetry  by  imitation  ; 
but  it  is  not  the  only  element  in  the  case.  True,  it  is  the 
most  obvious  element.  Comparative  literature,  as  a  science, 
is  young.  The  task  put  before  its  followers  was  plain 
enough ;  they  had  first  of  all  to  sift  the  material,  to  note 
where  deep  has  called  unto  deep  in  the  influence  of  one  poet 
upon  another,  as  well  as  to  follow  the  fortunes  of  a  primitive 
bagman's  jest  carried  on  the  old  trading  routes  from  land  to 
land  and  starting  up  at  last  as  conte  or  schwank  in  a  hundred 
scattered  communities,  in  cloister,  school,  and  court.  But  this 
is  not  all,  and  the  task  is  not  done  even  when  one  has  struck 
the  balance  between  the  borrowings  of  a  poet  and  what  one 
suffers  to  pass  as  his  individual  and  original  genius.  Abused 
as  the  terms  have  been,  the  genius  of  time,  place,  community, 
is  still  a  factor  in  the  growth  of  any  literature ;  and  M.  Gas- 
ton Paris,  who  has  done  so  much  for  the  study  of  sources,  is 
emphatic  on  this  point.  In  several  passages,  notably  in  a 
discussion  of  the  method  to  be  followed  in  studying  poetry 
of  the  people,^  he  sets  a  bound  to  the  theory  of  borrowings, 
and  insists  upon  the  common  fund  or  "  patrimony "  of 
national  tradition.  Steinthal,  too,  is  not  altogether  negligible 
with  his  query ;  why  assume,  he  asks,^  that  because  Europe 
imported  so  much,  she  must  have  been  herself  sterile  '^.  That 
old  Aryan  patrimony,  to  be  sure,  as  source  of  myth,  legend, 
poem,  rite,  is  out  of  favour,  perhaps  definitely  abandoned  ; 
but  Comparetti,^  who  approves  this  abandonment,  is  full  of 
zeal  for  the  development  of  all  poetry,  provided  it  has  the 
spontaneous  and  native  note,  within  the  limits  of  its  own 
nation  and  its  own  tongue.  Borrowing  is,  after  all,  incidental, 
however  conspicuous  in  fact ;  and  it  would  be  a  wild  system 
of  economics  which  should  explain  the  industrial  life  of  the 

1  Melusine,  I.  i  ff.     See,  too,  Poesie  du  Moyen  Age,  pp.  77,  89. 

2  Zeitschr.f.   Volkerpsychol,  XVII.  II3  ff. 
'  Kalewala,  p.  38. 


SCIENCE   AND    COMMUNAL   POETRY  353 

world  as  purely  a  matter  of  exchange,  of  debtor  and  creditor, 
without  any  hint  of  agriculture  and  manufactures.  One  sees 
all  the  faring  of  ship  and  car,  the  tumult  of  docks,  drays, 
storehouses,  the  stir  in  counting-rooms,  banks,  exchange ; 
what  of  plough  and  mill  and  mine?  It  is  just  these,  so  to 
speak,  that  one  fails  to  see  in  such  clever  literary  balancing 
of  accounts  as  certain  scholars  have  made  in  the  study  of 
Scandinavian  ballads.  Take  a  holiday  throng  of  the  unlet- 
tered mediaeval  community,  intent  upon  song  and  dance, 
all  dancing  and  all  singing ;  will  no  one  tell  us  what  they 
sing.''  A  score  of  scholars.  They  produce  the  ballad,  —  no 
easy  feat,  —  and  for  this  alone  deserve  lasting  gratitude.  As 
they  find  it,  it  is  not  likely  to  be  merely  a  local  affair,  for  such 
things  seldom  come  upon  record,  although  it  is  quite  clear 
that  perhaps  the  majority  of  ballads  in  this  class  were  of 
purely  local  interest.  Very  likely,  however,  it  is  borrowed, 
and  the  scholar  —  again,  no  easy  feat  —  traces  the  loan  to  its 
source.  The  form  of  the  stanza  may  be  imported,  too,  with 
its  simple  air ;  and  even  now  and  then  the  peculiar  rhythm 
of  the  hnes  may  be  an  echo  of  alien  song.  Here,  then,  is 
imitation ;  it  need  not  have  been  imitation,  and  in  some  other 
place  was  doubtless  a  home  product  throughout ;  but  here 
imitation  must  be  conceded.  Our  ingenious  literary  account- 
ant, however,  is  emboldened  to  take  another  step  ;  the  impulse 
which  drives  that  throng  to  express  its  feelings  by  rhythm, 
movement,  cry,  he  takes  away  from  instinct  and  sets  down 
to  the  credit  of  some  other  community  ;  the  very  dancing  and 
singing,  that  is,  he  regards  as  an  imitated,  borrowed  thing. 
Rosenberg,  in  his  book  on  the  Intellectual  Life  of  Scandi- 
navia} tries  to  prove  that  "  dancing  and  singing  to  the 
dance  "  came  to  Norsemen  from  the  Celts ;  and  to  make  this 
probable,  he  has  recourse  to  that  perilous  figure,  the  universal 
negative.     There  were  no  dancing-songs,  he  says,  in  oldest 

1  Nordboernes  Aandsliv,  II.  437  ff. 
2  A 


354  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

English  ;  dancing-song  and  refrain,  he  argues  from  records 
notoriously  imperfect,  were  also  unknown  to  the  early  Ger- 
man, and  came  to  him  as  a  Celtic  export,  although  the  Ger- 
man was  the  first  to  use  these  forms  in  narrative.^  That  is, 
the  Germans  had  at  first  no  song  for  the  dance,  but  got  it  from 
the  Celts,  who  in  their  turn  had  not  used  the  narrative  song 
for  dancing,  and  by  way  of  barter  imported  it,  as  among  the 
Bretons,  from  a  German  source.  The  refrain  and  the  dance, 
novelties  both,  came  with  viking  spoils  into  Scandinavian  life, 
made  things  "  lighter  and  more  gay,"  and  "  for  the  first  time 
gave  ladies  the  chance  of  active  participation  in  social  enjoy- 
ment." In  Iceland,  Rosenberg  goes  on  to  say,  there  was  no 
dancing  until  about  the  year  1200;^  though  folk  there  took 
hugely  to  the  thing  when  they  once  had  it.  Moreover,  "  all 
agree  that  this  dance  and  song  was  at  first  an  exclusive  pre- 
rogative of  noble  families."  A  thousand  years,  then,  one  is 
to  conceive  the  case,  foot  and  voice  went  never  paired  in 
Norland,  dance  and  refrain  were  unknown,  until  example 
came  from  the  South  !  Tantae  violis  erat ;  to  set  folk  danc- 
ing to  their  own  songs  needed  such  ponderous  machinery  and 
such  a  stretch  of  time  !  Had  Rosenberg's  comparative  litera- 
ture only  made  itself  comparative  beyond  the  shreds  and 
patches  of  written  records,  beyond  the  narrow  range  of 
Europe  and  the  mediaeval  limits ;  had  he  only  taken  Adam 
Smith's  or  Lord  Monboddo's  interest  in  African  natives  like 
that  one  who  danced  a  war  dance  before  the  genial  Adam  and 
his  friends,  compelling  all  hands  to  leap  upon  chairs  and 
tables  for  safety !     Rosenberg  and  scholars  of  his  class  are 

^  The  refrain  of  two  lines,  he  thinks,  was  added  to  the  two-line  stanza  of  nar- 
rative ballads;  and  so  resulted  the  common  ballad  stanza.  This  is  denied  by 
Steenstrup. 

^  "  Proved  "  by  that  old  primitive- Aryan  process  now  something  discredited : 
dam  is  an  imported  word  (meaning  both  song  and  dance).  See  Vigfusson's 
Icelandic  Dictionary,  s.v.  More  formidable,  but  far  from  final,  is  the  silence  of  the 
sagas. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  355 

not  comparative  enough ;  they  forget  wider  and  more  impor 
tant  reaches.^  The  habit  of  turning  an  event  or  a  situation 
straightway  into  improvised  verse  with  gestures  and  dancing, 
is  so  well  attested  in  the  accounts  of  savage  Hfe,  so  well 
attested  in  cases  where  isolated  and  unlettered  communities 
in  modern  Europe  have  been  left  to  their  own  "literary" 
devices,^  that  in  the  face  of  such  evidence  the  assertion  that 
Norse  folk  waited  a  thousand  years  for  a  hint  from  the  Celts 
before  they  began  to  dance  to  rough  chorus  and  refrain  of 
their  own  singing,  falls  like  a  house  of  cards.  Borrowing 
money  is  not  a  sign  of  bankruptcy ;  and  the  valuable  afifirma- 
tive  evidence  of  literary  loans  which  these  scholars  give  us 
is  half  spoiled  by  the  absurdity  of  their  universal  negative  in 
regard  to  native  production.  For  example,  we  know  that 
Finns,  in  very  recent  times,  borrowed  a  store  of  Swedish  bal- 
lads, and  that  the  name  veisa^  used  in  Finnish  for  a  ballad, 
is  taken  from  that  source ;  but,  as  every  one  knows,  the  Finns 
had  their  own  native  songs.  Suppose,  now,  that  these  native 
songs  had  long  since  disappeared,  as  they  doubtless  would 
have  disappeared  under  the  circumstances  of  primitive  Scan- 
dinavian ballads ;  and  how  cheerfully  the  literary  accountant 
could  have  assured  his  reader  that  there  were  no  Finnish 
songs  whatever  until  those  Swedish  loans  were  made ! 

Let  us  go  back  now  to  the  main  question,  and  take  its 
outer  circle.  Here  one  is  told  to  blot  from  one's  diction- 
ary such  words  as  instinct,  spontaneity,  Jioniogetieons ;  but, 
with  these  well  erased,  how  is  one  to  speak  of  that  group 

1  A  similar  denial,  not  only  of  the  original  character  of  recorded  ballads,  but  of 
the  ballad  habit  itself,  is  made  for  Denmark  by  Professor  G.  Storm  in  his  otherwise 
valuable  book,  Sagnkredsene  oni  Karl  den  Store  og  Didrik  af  Bern  hos  de  nordiske 
Folk,  Kristiania,  1874,  pp.  174  f. 

'^  See  below  on  the  schnaderhupjl  and  stev. 

^  Comparetti,  Kalewala,  1892.  pp.  3,  264  ff.  The  very  name  of  the  Finnish 
song  is  probably  borrowed;  but  its  original  and  native  character  is  successfully 
defended  by  Comparetti,  pp.  37,  272,  against  the  attempt  of  Ahlqvist  to  prove 
alliteration  in  Finnish  verse  a  loan  from  the  Scandinavians. 


356  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

of  primitive  men  huddled  on  the  frontier  of  civiHzation  ? 
They  have  no  instincts,  no  spontaneous  gestures  and  cries ; 
they  are  not  homogeneous,  and  no  homogeneous  expression 
can  come  out  of  them.  They  cannot  borrow ;  for  they  are 
opening  the  first  concern  of  its  kind.  What  are  they  doing, 
then .''  Getting  ready,  one  is  told,  for  a  game  of  follow-the- 
leader,  the  game  of  all  civilized  and  uncivilized  beings,  and 
the  law  of  all  animate  things.  Here  is  a  formula  not  merely 
valid  in  the  explanation  of  literary  progress,  but  the  last 
word  of  philosophy  itself.  It  is  labour  lost  to  set  up  the 
spontaneous,  communal  impulse  as  a  factor  in  solving  these 
problems  of  primitive  poetry,  if  the  spontaneous  and  the 
communal  are  impossible  ideas,  mere  superstitions,  props  on 
which  rationalism  once  leaned  in  passing  from  the  grosser 
explanations  of  ghosts,  gods,  what  not,  but  now  broken  and 
cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void.  By  the  theory  of  M.  Tarde,  for 
example,  there  is  no  spontaneity  possible ;  rhythm  in  its 
widest  sense,  dancing,  even  tears  and  laughter,  breathing, 
all  cease  to  be  outcome  of  emotion  common  and  instinctive ; 
they  are  imitation  by  one  individual  of  another  individual,  or, 
to  take  refuge  in  biology,  of  one  cell  of  another  cell.  The 
microcosm  is  here  no  figure  of  speech ;  in  this  little  world  of 
man  is  a  commonwealth  of  individual  cells,  with  crossing  and 
varied  interests ;  an  inventive,  masterful  cell  takes  the  lead, 
sweeps  along  most  of  the  other  cells,  which  imitate  and  obey, 
opposes  and  destroys  others,  adapts  itself  by  compromise  to 
a  few  more,  —  and  this  is  man,  just  as  it  is  society:  inven- 
tion, imitation,  but  no  spontaneity.  Invention  is  the  rare 
and  difificult  factor ;  imitation  is  the  constant  factor.^     That 

1  Set  forth  in  Tarde's  Les  Lois  de  P Imitation,  Paris,  1890;  but  the  best  recent 
summary  of  his  views  is  Les  Lois  Sociales,  Paris,  1898.  Special  problems  of  the 
crowd  as  imitative,  dangerous,  weak,  are  treated  in  his  Essais  et  Melanges  Sociolo- 
giques,  Lyon-Paris,  1895.  ^^^  ^'^°  "  ^^^  deux  Elements  de  la  Sociologie,"  in 
Etudes  de  Psychologie  Sociale,  Paris,  1898,  an  address  delivered  in  1894  before 
the  first  international  Congress  of  Sociology. 


SCIENCE    AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  357 

is,  to  put  the  case  more  concisely,  Tarde  attacks  two  theses, 
the  assertion  of  spontaneity  in  a  throng  and  the  assertion 
that  development  is  from  the  homogeneous  to  the  hetero- 
geneous. 

All  this  is  not  so  new  as  it  seems  to  be.  It  is  early  eigh- 
teenth-century philosophy  translated  into  late  nineteenth- 
century  science.  It  is  a  reaction  from  a  reaction ;  for  Wil- 
helm  von  Humboldt,  Hamann,  Herder,  and  the  rest,  "  tired 
of  kings,"  tired  of  the  "  great  man,"  turned  to  man  himself, 
to  humanity,  nature,  to  great  forces  revealed  in  human  insti- 
tutions everywhere.  Speech,  said  Humboldt,  is  no  inven- 
tion ;  it  is  an  energy,  a  power.  At  the  beginning,  says  M. 
Tarde,^  "a  savage  genius"  in  a  single  family,  invented  the 
earliest  form  of  language ;  and  families  everywhere  came  to 
borrow  this  anthropoid's  linguistic  iire.  M.  Tarde  is  suavely 
bent  on  exterminating  the  idea  of  nature.  Even  Darwin  had 
said  speech  was  half  art,  half  instinct ;  and  an  early  Darwin- 
ian, Lord  Monboddo,^  believing  that  "  everything  of  art  must 
be  founded  on  nature,"  derived  language  from  "  natural 
cries."  Nature,  says  M.  Tarde,  is  a  superstition  ;  and  with 
it  he  tosses  away  instinct  and  spontaneity.  The  solution  for 
every  possible  problem  of  man's  destiny  he  seeks  in  one  of 
those  cerveajix  de  genie,  savage  or  civilized,  heterogeneous 
factors  of  life,  like  the  masterful  cell  from  which  all  has 
come  and  to  which  all  shall  yet  return.  All  social  adapta- 
tion is  reduced  to  the  work  "  of  two  men,  of  whom  one  an- 
swers, by  word  or  by  deed,  to  the  question,  verbal  or  silent, 
of  the  other."  Men  are  alike,  think  alike,  do  alike,  not  by 
any  law  or  by  any  instinct  of  species,  but  by  this  fact  of  imi- 
tation ;  any  group,  large  or  small,  will  consist  of  two  parts, 
one  learning  and  one  teaching,  one  producing  and  one  con- 

^  Les  Lois  de  r Imitation,  p.  279.  So  p.  48,  —  "A  I'origine  un  anthropolde  a 
imagine  ...  les  rudiments  d'un  langage." 

2  Of  the  Origin  and  Progress  of  Language,  I.  318  ff. 


358  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

suming,  "one  actor,  poet,  artist,  and  the  other  looker-on, 
reader,  amateur."  ^  The  group  of  two  individuals,  the  har- 
mony of  it,  Tarde  now  pushes  back  to  an  earlier  harmony 
between  two  ideas  in  the  brain  of  the  individual  inventor; 
and  this  is  to  stretch  into  the  infinitesimal.  How,  he  cries 
in  an  eloquent  passage,^  how  can  a  Spencer,  as  well  as  the 
man  in  the  street,  go  on  treating  this  infinitesimal  as  of  no 
moment,  as  a  homogeneous,  neutral  thing,  with  naught  in  it 
spiritual  and  distinct  .'*  Why  make  the  vast  range  of  space 
your  theatre  of  existence  .-'  Within  this  despised  infinitesimal, 
mayhap,  lie  the  chances  of  death  or  immortality,  the  secret 
of  being  itself.  And  we  call  this  ovule,  this  part  of  the 
ovule,  this  part  of  the  part,  —  undifferentiated  !  ^  Darwin  is 
right  in  his  general  theory  of  descent,  but  he  is  wrong  in  his 
explanation,  thinks  M.  Tarde ;  for  the  true  cause  of  the  spe- 
cies is  "  the  secret  of  the  cells,  tJie  invention  of  some  early 
ovule  endowed  with  peculiar  and  rich  originality. ' '  What, 
once  more,  what  of  our  little  group  of  primitive  men,  their 
instinct  of  kind,  their  spontaneous  gestures  and  steps  and 
cries,  their  homogeneous  character  and  therefore  homoge- 
neous expression .''  Seek  out  the  masterful  cell  in  the 
masterful  brain  of  the  masterful  leader  of  that  sorry  set  of 
imitators,  and  it  will  tell  all  secrets  of  civiUzation  and 
human  progress,  poetry  and  the  arts  included.  There  is 
no  "  society "  for  M.  Tarde,  and,  for  the  sake  of  dignified 
and  decent  thought,  no  inilicn,  no  "  they,"  *  —  that  figment  of 
nonsense  in  the  phrase  "they  say,"  —  no  "social  forces." 
Instead  of  explaining  the  small  by  the  great,  the  detail  by  the 

^  He  concedes  that  a  different  relation  exists  when  two  are  working  together 
at  the  same  thing  (^Lois  Soc,  p.  129)  ;  although  here  are  "model  and  copy,"  sug- 
gestion at  least. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  159. 

*  He  sees  light  ahead  for  a  world  now  hung  in  Schopenhauer-black  ;  the 
infinitesimal  shall  cheer  us.     Ibid.,  pp.  87,  105,  110. 

*  Lois  Sociales,  pp.  40  f.     This  passage  will  repay  close  attention. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  359 

mass,  he  explains  a  group  of  similar  things  by  the  accumu- 
lation of  minor  elementary  processes,  the  great  by  the  small, 
the  mass  by  the  detail.  There  is  for  M.  Tarde  no  genius  of 
a  race,  of  a  language,  of  a  religion ;  at  the  best,  this  genius 
of  the  people  is  a  label  for  the  individuals,  or  a  sort  of  com- 
posite photograph.  Hennequin^  argued  in  the  same  way 
against  an  English  type  in  literature,  against  a  Norman  or 
a  Gascon  type  in  French ;  it  is  worth  noting  that  his  argu- 
ments and  Tarde's  philosophy  were  anticipated  at  one  of 
the  Magny  dinners  in  January,  1866.  "Taine  asserted,"  so 
the  Goncourt  Jojirnal  reports,  "  that  all  men  of  talent  are  the 
product  of  their  environment.  We  took  the  other  side. 
'Where  are  you  going  to  find,'  we  said,  'the  exotic  root  of 
Chateaubriand,  —  a  pineapple  growing  in  the  barracks  ! ' 
Gautier  came  to  our  support,  and  maintained  that  the  brain 
of  an  artist  was  the  same  thing  under  the  Pharaohs  that  it 
is  now." 

M.  Tarde,  however,  with  his  followers,  is  by  no  means  in 
undisputed  possession  of  the  field,  whether  in  sociology  or 
in  literature.  Gumplowicz^  declares  that  "the  behaviour 
of  collective  entities  is  determined  by  natural  and  socio- 
logical laws,  and  not  by  the  motives  and  natural  qualities 
of  individuals."  Moreover,  as  he  says,  the  horde  and  the 
social  group  make  a  unit,  and  this  is  unlike  its  parts ;  it  can- 
not be  inferred  from  its  parts.  Social  thought  came  before 
individual  thought.  Some  of  the  best  scholars  in  sociology 
have  come  out  frankly  for  dualism ;  and  in  the  opinion  of 

^  Critique  Scientifique,  pp.  19 1  ff.  Carstanjen  made  a  fierce  attack  on  the 
milieu  in  art,  and,  by  implication,  in  literature  :  Vierteljahrsschrift  f.  wissen- 
schaftl.  Philosophic,  XX.  (1896),  i  ff.,  143  ff.  He  explains  the  art  of  the  renais- 
sance by  the  artists  of  that  time,  and  not  by  their  environment.  For  a  fine  defence 
of  the  milieu,  however,  see  the  late  M.  Texte's  book  qx\  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  et 
les  Origines  du  Cosmopolitisme  Litteraire,  pp.  xvii.  ff. 

-  Outlines  oj  Sociology,  trans.  F.  W.  Moore  for  the  Amer.  Acad.  Pol.  and  Soc. 
Sci.,  June,  1899,  pp.  45,  88.     See  the  translator's  abstract,  p.  7. 


36o  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Dr.  Barth,^  dualism  has  now  been  proved  for  the  past  and 
recognized  for  present  and  future.  Professor  Giddings^ 
takes  this  view  and  offers  proof ;  he  puts  the  consciousness 
of  kind  before  invention  and  initiation,  for  society,  as  he 
says,  is  an  organization  and  not  an  organism.  Perhaps  a 
majority  of  French  scholars  hold  against  M.  Tarde ;  and 
while  Germany  has  been  rampant  for  individualism,  a  dis- 
tinct reaction  has  set  in  with  the  work  of  Bernheim,  of 
Lamprecht,  and  of  Barth  himself.  As  Ranke  grew  older, 
says  Lamprecht,  he  grew  less  willing  to  lay  stress  on  great 
personalities  in  history,  which,  he  thought,  must  more  and 
more  find  its  account  in  the  movement  and  condition  of 
masses.  Comte  is  not  discredited  in  the  spirit  of  his  theory, 
whatever  has  become  of  the  details ;  and,  turning  to  psy- 
chology, one  finds  Wundt^  actually  defending  the  social 
mind,  so  vehemently  attacked  by  Paul  in  his  Principles. 
Wundt  says  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  volksseele,  the  sum 
of  experiences  in  a  multitude ;  and  the  products  of  such 
communal  experiences,  due  to  the  coexistence  and  mutual 
working  of  many  minds,  cannot  be  explained  by  conditions 
of  the  individual  mind.  Language,  myth,  and  custom,  he  says, 
are  the  three  products  of  this  mind  or  soul  of  the  people ; 
and  it  is  not  hard  to  find  room  for  poetry  in  the  province 
lying  between  speech  and  myth.^  The  problem  thus  stated 
and  studied  by  Wundt  has  been  undertaken  by  several  other 
writers,  notably  by  M.  Le  Bon,^  and  even,  in  a  hostile  spirit, 

^  Die  Fhilosophie  der  Geschichle  ah  Sociologie,  Leipzig,  1897,  I.  183,  213  f. 

2  Principles  of  Sociology,  New  York,  1896. 

•5  "  Ueber  Ziele  und  Wage  der  Volkerpsychologie,"  in  Philosophische  Studien, 
1888,  IV.  I  ff.,  particularly  pp.  11  ff.  and  17. 

*  In  his  Volkerpsychologie  (Vol.  I.,  Leipzig,  1900,  has  appeared),  he  undertakes 
to  study  the  making  of  these  three  products,  which  he  calls  z.  gemeinsames  Erzeug- 
itiss.  See  pp.  4,  6,  24  f.  A  sensible  plea  for  the  volksseele,  "  which  need  not 
have  any  mystical  connotation,"  was  made  by  Gustav  Freytag  in  the  introduc- 
tion to  his  Bilder  aus  der  detitscheii  Vergangcnheii,  I.  13  ff. 

''  Psychologic  des  Foules ;  and  in  English  translation,  The  Crowd. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  36 1 

by  M.  Tarde  himself.  Von  Hartmann  ^  studied  the  "col- 
lective mind"  as  long  ago  as  1869,  and  fitted  it  into  his 
philosophy  of  the  unconscious ;  while  the  Journal  of  Dcuio- 
psycJiology  and  Philology,  of  Steinthal  and  Lazarus,  fought  a 
losing  fight  for  demos  in  the  old  days  from  i860,  merging  at 
last  into  the  Journal  of  the  Ethnological  Society?  It  is  the 
fashion  to  laugh  at  this  old  journal,  and  it  had  its  defects ; 
the  student  of  poetry,  however,  will  do  well  to  bear  in  mind 
that  Ten  Brink,^  in  his  spirited  account  of  communal  song 
as  the  basis  of  English  poetry,  expressly  declares  that  he 
"  learned  the  most "  about  his  subject  from  an  article  by 
Steinthal  in  the  same  periodical.  Again,  there  is  Bastian 
for  ethnology ;  obscure  in  expression,  hazy  in  thought,  he 
backs  his  pet  idea  of  the  volkergedanken  with  a  range  of 
ethnological  facts  which  no  one  will  neglect  or  despise. 
These  are  positive  considerations ;  and  with  them  must  go 
a  negative  but  valuable  result  due  to  the  failure  of  Tarde, 
Kawczynski,  and  others,  in  applying  their  arguments  to  facts. 
Take  M.  Tarde's  signally  unfortunate  illustration  of  his  idea 
that  invention  is  the  only  initial  power  with  which  one 
reckons  in  literature,  —  that  poetry,  for  example,  always 
"  begins*  with  a  book  "  —  a  book  !  —  "an  epopee,  some  poet- 
ical work  of  great  relative  perfection,  .  .  .  some  high  initial 
source."  And  what  are  the  examples  of  this  law  of  poetic 
origins.-*  "The  Iliad,  the  Bible,  Dante."  Here  is  sheer 
absurdity.  Each  of  these  cases  tends  to  prove  the  exact 
opposite  of  what  M.  Tarde  would  have  it  prove.      Did   he 


1  "  Das  Wesen  des  Gesammtgeistes,"  Studiett  und  Aufs'dtze,  pp.  504  ff. 

2  Significant  is  the  change  from  Volkerpsychologie  to  Volkskunde.  The  new 
journal  is  edited  by  Professor  Weinhold,  and  began  in  1891. 

^  In  Paul's  Grutidriss  der  Philologie,  II.  i.,  512  ff.  See  also  Ten  Brink's 
Beowulf,  pp.  105  f. 

*  Debute.  See  Lois  de  VImit.,  p.  233.  He  is  arguing  against  Spencer's  doc- 
trine of  the  development  of  the  arts,  and  implies  the  same  "  high  initial  source  " 
for  music,  architecture,  and  the  rest. 


362  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

come  to  this  fatal  idea,  that  all  great  literature  starts  with 
a  great  book,  by  reading  Hugo's  preface  to  Cromwell f^ 
Worse,  even,  is  his  assertion  that  "  modern  literature  begins 
with  the  Romance  of  the  Rose."^ 

The  theory  of  M.  Tarde,  noteworthy  as  it  is,  and  salutary 
as  some  of  its  appeals  must  prove  in  correcting  romantic 
extravagances,  cannot  be  upheld  even  as  a  theory,  and  breaks 
down  lamentably  when  applied  to  poetical  facts.  A  saner 
belief  would  accept  the  immense  part  played  by  imitation,  but 
would  refuse  to  give  it  sole  possession  of  the  field.  It  is  the 
clash  of  communal  and  individual  tendencies,^  of  centripetal 
and  centrifugal,  with  which  M.  Tarde  forgets  to  reckon  ;  now 
the  individual  invents,  rules,  awes,  masters,  and  the  throng 
follow  like  sheep,  and  now  again  this  throng  is  —  not  are 
—  tyrannical  to  such  a  degree  that  the  philosopher  of  that 
epoch  cries  out  that  there  is  no  individual  initiative,  all  is  law, 
natural  forces,  social  forces,  —  and  so  comes  to  an  extreme  as 
illogical  as  that  of  M.  Tarde.  It  is  true  that  a  work  of  art  is 
not  a  mere  registry  of  popular  sentiment,  of  environment,  of 
the  temper  of  the  time;  it  is  also  true  that  the  artist  cannot  take 
himself  out  of  those  influences.  Art  is  social,  and  without 
society  would  not  exist.  It  is  simple  recognition  of  facts  to 
assert  that  art,  like  religion,  law,  custom,  serves  as  an  index 
for  tendencies  which  underlie  the  thought  and  emotion  of  an 
epoch  ;  it  works  below  the  surface,  this  movement,  and  is 
often  belied    by  all  signs  that  can  be  read  on  the  surface, 

^  "  Enfin  ce  triple  poesie  decoule  de  trois  grandes  sources,  la  Bible,  Homere, 
Shakspeare." 

2  Lois  Sociales,  p.  49. 

'  The  abstract  question  is  foreign  to  the  present  purpose;  but  it  may  be  urged 
that  one  is  wise  to  take  neither  the  extreme  position  of  Buckle,  Gumplowicz,  and 
Bourdeau,  —  who  said  that  if  Napoleon  had  been  shot  at  Toulon,  Hoche,  or  Kleber, 
or  some  one,  would  have  done  what  Napoleon  did,  —  nor  yet  the  equally  extreme 
stand  of  Tarde  and  his  school.  Some  sensible  remarks  on  the  whole  matter  may 
be  found  in  Bernheini's  I.ehrbuch  d.  historischen  Methode,  pp.  513  ff.  of  the  second 
e.'lition,  Leipzig,  1894. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  363 

until  suddenly  these  change  too,  and  the  period  has  registered 
its  characteristics  after  the  fashion  of  a  clock  which  moves  its 
hands  only  at  the  end  of  each  minute.  It  is  true,  moreover, 
that  this  movement  must  belong  to  the  body  in  which  it  takes 
place ;  yet  it  is  also  true  that  the  movements  of  communal 
thought,  as  Wundt  pointed  out,  are  different  in  kind  from 
the  movements  of  individual  thought. 

But  this  is  too  fine-spun  stuff  for  that  group  of  primitive 
men  concerned  with  their  first  effort  at  song.  Granted  the 
communal  force  with  which  we  would  endow  them,  what  of 
the  instinctive  step,  gesture,  cry,  —  can  these  really  be  instinc- 
tive and  not  mere  imitation  of  a  leader .'' 

As  to  instinctive  utterance,  that  idea,  though  somewhat 
rudely  shaken,  still  stands.^  There  are  instinctive  sounds, 
and  man  is  or  was  no  exception  to  the  rule.  The  social 
influence,  assumed  by  everybody  as  real  cause  of  articulate 
speech,  would  work  not  upon  a  new  sound  "  invented  "  by 
some  primitive  genius,  but  upon  the  instinctive  sounds 
uttered  by  each  unit  of  a  throng.  That  individuals  discov- 
ered or  invented  modifications  of  these  sounds,  no  one  will 
deny ;  but  the  conditions  of  primitive  life  were  those  of  a 
horde,  with  individuals  at  a  minimum  of  importance,  so  that 
the  earliest  progress  in  speech  and  poetry  was  due  to  the 
almost  unconscious  changes  made  by  a  festal  throng  under 
the  excitement  of  social  consent,  —  a  very  different  thing 
from  invention  and  imitation  as  the  terms  now  hold. 
Whether  one  wishes  to  carry  farther  this  mutual  influence 
of  man  upon  man  in  a  throng  equally  active  in  all  its  parts, 
or  not,  is  of  little  moment.     The  conditions  of  progress  in 

1  See  Lloyd  Morgan,  Habit  and  Instinct,  Chap.  II.  Solitary  chicks  hatched 
in  an  incubator  can  be  heard  chirping,  all  in  the  same  way,  before  they  break  the 
shell,  and  with  no  chance  of  imitation  in  the  case.  Weismann,  "  Gedanken  iiber 
Musik,"  Rundschau,  LXI.  (1889),  63>  remarks  that  a  young  finch  brought  up 
alone  will  sing  the  song  of  its  kind,  "  but  never  so  beautifully  as  when  a  good 
singer  is  put  with  him  as  teacher."     The  concession  is  enough. 


364  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

speech  and  song  were  immediately  communal,  in  strong 
contrast  to  the  isolated,  individual,  mediating  conditions 
of  such  progress  at  the  present  day.  All  we  ask  of  biol- 
ogy is  the  concession  of  instinct ;  at  the  basis  of  human 
poetry,  that  vast  edifice  of  art,  and,  as  it  seems  to  the 
modern  man,  of  nothing  but  art,  lie  instinctive  utterances, 
homogeneous,  if  one  may  judge  by  chick  and  bird,^  and 
subject  to  their  first  modifications  not  from  individual  effort 
but  from  social  consent  and  the  enormous  force  of  communal 
emotion. 

Psychology,  too,  joins  biology  in  allowing  that  instinctive 
forms  of  utterance  and  expression  in  primitive  times  may 
have  led  to  that  gemeinsames  dicJiten  in  chorus,  refrain, 
dance,  which  is  claimed  for  nature  and  opposed  to  art. 
Imitation,  in  any  sense  that  concerns  the  argument  in  hand, 
is  after  all  a  matter  of  deliberation,  reason,  choice ;  but  the 
expression  of  emotion  in  children  as  in  savages  is  rapid, 
instantaneous,  instinctive.  "  Except  fear,"  says  Ribot,^  "  all 
primary  emotions  imply  tendencies  to  movement,  sometimes 
blind  and  violent,  like  natural  forces.  This  is  seen  in  infants, 
animals,  savages,  the  barbarians  of  the  first  centuries  of  our 
era.  .  .  .  The  passage  of  emotion  into  action,  good  or  bad, 
is  instantaneous,  rapid,  and  fatal  as  a  reflex  movement." 
Panic  fright,  where  animals  are  almost  paralyzed,  is,  in- 
deed, a  matter  of  rapid  suggestion  and  imitation  in  cases 
where  the  cause  is  not  apparent ;  but  panic  elation  is  active, 
a  movement,  a  sympathy,  an  instinctive  consent  of  voice  and 
limb.     Moreover,  the  throng  is  always  to  be  kept  in  mind, 

1  Morgan,  work  quoted,  p.  90.  Even  Mr.  Witchell,  for  whom  the  song  of 
birds  is  traditional,  grants  that  call-notes,  alarm-notes,  and  all  such  utterances  are 
instinctive.  See  Morgan,  p.  178,  and  Romanes,  Mental  Evolution  in  Animals, 
pp.  222  f. 

'^  Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  p.  265.  The  part  assigned  to  imitation  in  seem- 
ingly spontaneous  expression  of  emotion  in  a  child,  Baldwin,  Mental  Development 
in  Child  and  Race,  pp.  260  ff.,  does  not  affect  this  study  of  emotion  in  throngs. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  365 

and  the  analogy  of  children  in  a  family,  as  well  as  of  sav- 
ages brought  among  civilized  folk,  is  to  be  held  resolutely 
back ;  it  is  no  analogy  at  all.  Who  played  the  suggestive 
part  of  parent,  of  grown  or  civilized  people,  to  the  imi- 
tation of  a  mass  of  human  beings  in  those  earliest  days  ? 
Horde  conditions  are  too  easily  forgotten,  and  psychology 
needs  to  take  them  more  into  account,  just  as  it  is  taking 
instinct  again  into  favour.  Beginning  about  1850,  a  move- 
ment against  instinct  is  plainly  traced  through  the  writings  of 
men  like  Bain  and  A.  R.  Wallace ;  but  the  feud  was  carried 
too  far,  and  Professor  Karl  Groos,  in  one  of  the  best  books  ^ 
which  have  lately  appeared  on  this  subject,  notes  the  reaction 
not  only  in  Wundt,  but  in  Lotze,  Spencer,  Sully,  and  Ribot, 
against  this  effort  to  blot  the  word  instinct  from  our  diction- 
aries. Groos,  who  has  ample  respect  for  imitation  as  a  lead- 
ing force  in  development  of  both  body  and  mind,  refuses  to 
give  it  absolute  rule.  Play,  he  says,  is  not  imitation,  "  but, 
if  the  phrase  will  pass,  a  foreboding  of  the  serious  occupation 
of  the  individual  ";  2  and  again,  "particularly  in  the  most 
important  and  most  elementary  forms  of  play,  there  can  be 
no  question  either  of  imitating  the  animal's  own  previous 
activity,  or  of  imitating  the  activity  of  other  individuals^ 
Mr.  Lloyd  Morgan  allowed  that  his  young  moor-hen,  with 
imitation  out  of  the  question,  executing  "  a  pretty  and  charac- 
teristic dance,"  showed  instinct  "  even  in  the  narrower  accepta- 
tion of  the  term."  Now  if  this  solitary  activity  is  "  congenital  " 
and  "instinctive,"  imitation  must  also  yield  some  ground  to 
instinct  in  gregarious  play  of  animals  and  in  communal  play 

1  Die  Spiele  der  Thiere,  Jena,  1896,  p.  8.  See,  however,  Spiele  der  I\fenscken, 
pp.  4,  365  ff.,  431,  446  ff.,  511  f. 

2  So  Noire  explained  the  case  in  the  section  on  the  development  of  language 
in  his  book,  Die  Welt  als  Entwicklung  des  Geistes,  Leipzig,  1874.  Like  Dono- 
van, too,  he  assumed  that  the  first  words  were  uttered  under  pressure  of  com- 
munal excitement,  elation,  joy,  social  sense.  He  assumes  that  social  conditions 
quite  overwhelmed  the  individual,  wlio  hardly  existed  as  such.     See  pp.  266  f. 


366  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

of  men.  When  Wimdt  ^  says  that  human  life  "  is  permeated 
through  and  through  with  instinctive  action,  determined  in 
part  by  intelligence  and  volition,"  he  states  in  scientific  terms 
the  old  dualism  of  nature  and  art,  of  throng  and  artist,  at 
which  the  rationalists  of  criticism  have  directed  so  many 
attacks.  That  fascinating  book,  Hudson's  Naturalist  on  the 
La  Plata,  gives  evidence  about  gregarious  play  among 
animals.^  All  mammals  and  birds,  he  says,  have  "  more  or 
less  regular  or  set  performances  with  or  without  sound,  or 
composed  of  sound  exclusively  .  .  .  performances  which  in 
many  animals  are  only  discordant  cries  and  chorus  and 
uncouth  irregular  motions,"  yet,  "in  the  more  aerial,  graceful, 
and  melodious  kinds,  take  immeasurably  higher,  more  com- 
plex, and  more  beautiful  forms."  Again,  "every  species,  or 
group  of  species,  has  its  own  inherited  form  or  style  of  per- 
formance ;  and  however  rude  and  irregular  this  may  be  .  .  . 
that  is  the  form  in  which  the  feeling  will  alzvays  be  expressed.'' 
Plainly,  for  whatever  reason,  the  individual  is  here  under  the 
control  of  the  species ;  and  imitation  cannot  be  the  sole 
explaining  cause  either  of  the  impulse  or  of  the  performance. 
In  fact,  as  Groos  concludes,^  in  regard  to  play  "  the  instincts 
are  sole  foundation.  Foundation,  for  not  all  play  is  pure 
work  of  instinct ;  on  the  contrary,  the  higher  one  proceeds, 
the  richer  and  more  delicate  grow  those  psychological  ele- 
ments which  are  added  to  the  simple  impulse  of  nature, 
ennoble  it,  elevate  it,  and  now  and  again  almost  conceal  it. 
But  the  foundation  is  instinct." 

What  Professor  Groos  has  not  done  in  his  interesting  books 
is  to  give  adequate  importance  to  the  choral  and  communal 
fact ;  he  neglects  the  antithesis  between  common  action  and 

^  Quoted,  p.  328,  by  Morgan,  from  Lectures  on  Human  and  Animal  Psychology^ 

P-  397- 

*  See  Wallaschek  against  this  idea,  above,  p.  lOO. 
'  Wori<  quoted,  p.  21. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY 


367 


imitated  action  in  a  social  group.  This  choral  impulse  may 
be  referred  to  a  pleasure  in  common,  instinctive  action,  rarely 
noted  by  psychologists,  which  is  a  quite  different  affair  from 
the  pleasure  of  imitating  as  well  as  from  the  pleasure  of  see- 
ing or  hearing  a  thing  done.  Groos  himself  notes  that  the 
mass-play  of  birds  is  like  the  mass-dance  of  primitive  men 
which  sprang  from  sexual  excitement.  Still,  in  the  table  ^ 
printed  at  the  end  of  his  earlier  book  one  sees  how  completely 
he  leaves  the  choral  and  communal  case  out  of  account. 
He  recognizes  in  the  first  column  of  this  table  the  rep- 
resentation of  self,  the  personal  impulse,  but  not  as  a 
social  expression  by  social  consent;  these  forms  of  play 
should  differ  according  to  the  solitary  or  social  character  of 
the  performance,  and  this  again  not  simply  in  terms  of  per- 
sonal instinct  and  communal  imitation.  There  is  a  social  or 
communal  personality,  at  all  events  where  human  society  is 
in  question,  created  by  any  combined  action  and  deriving 
from  the   instinctive,  not  necessarily  imitative  acts  of  indi- 

^  Work  quoted,  p.  340.     Play  is  thus  tabulated  :  — 


Selbstdarstellung. 

Nachahmung. 

Ausschmiickung. 

Personliches. 

Wahres. 

Schones. 

Beim  Thier : 
Bewerbungskunste. 

Nachahmungskiinste. 

Baukiinste. 

Beim  Menschen : 

Erregungstanz. 

Musik, 

Lyrik. 

Nachahmungstanz. 

Mimik. 

Plastik. 

Malerei. 

Epik. 

Drama. 

Kunstgewerbe. 

(Gartenbaukunst.) 

Architectur. 

Compare  with  this  the  table  given  in  Mr.  Baldwin  Brown's  useful  book  on  The 

Fine  Arts,  p.  36. 


368  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

viduals  as  conscious  parts  of  a  whole.  Society  is  not  the 
sum  of  individuals,  but  the  mass  of  them,  differing  as  a  mass 
in  its  parts  from  these  parts  as  individuals,  plus  the  greater 
or  less  influence  of  generations  of  previous  masses,  —  in  tra- 
ditions, custom,  and  the  like.  Dead  and  living  form  a  com- 
bination partly  organic  and  vital,  partly  immaterial ;  against 
this  stands  the  centrifugal,  thinking,  protesting,  innovating 
individual.  But  even  ignoring  tradition,  the  difference  holds. 
If  I  vote  with  a  party,  and  "it"  gains,  my  joy  is  not  mine 
plus  the  joy  of  all  who  voted  with  me,  but  mine  because  I 
am  a  part  of  the  voting  body.  How  much  stronger  the 
direct  case  under  almost  exclusively  communal  conditions ! 
Communal  elation,  quite  apart  from  personal  elation,  any  one 
can  still  study  in  his  own  mind,  but  under  conditions  which 
make  his  elation  a  thing  of  shame  to  his  intellectual,  critical 
self.  This  shame,  which  breeds  the  "mugwump"  and 
breaks  up  political  parties,  barely  existed  in  primitive  life,  — 
so  sociology  concludes  with  no  dissenting  voice.  Communal 
elation,  instinctive  expression  in  consent,  began,  by  Dono- 
van's reckoning,^  in  the  spontaneous  "  play-excitement "  of  a 
festal  throng,  which  may  or  may  not  have  parallels  in  the 
play  of  beasts  and  birds;  here  were  human  fellowship,  homo- 
geneous conditions,  "a  common  cause  of  excitement,"  and  a 
common  expression  of  it  in  the  social  consent  of  rhythm. 
Donovan,  too,  has  a  table  ^  to  illustrate  all  this  ;  "  play-excite- 
ment," instinctive,  drifts  into  "habits  of  movement"  and  into 
song ;  individual  song-making  is  a  later  affair,  and  is  devel- 
oped "  out  of  the  racial  memories."  So  great  a  factor  was 
this  communal  elation,  this  play-excitement,  in  the  making  of 
poetry.  But  life  has  never  been  all  play ;  poetry  echoes, 
perhaps  even  clearer  than  in  the  case  of  play,  the  stress  and 

1  Lyre   to  Muse,  pp.  127  f.     Mr.   Baldwin   Brown,   The  Fine  Arts,  p.  23,  also 
regards  art  in  general  as  an  outgrowth  of  festal  celebrations. 
'^  At  the  end  of  his  Lyre  to  Muse,  p.  209. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  369 

pain  of  human  effort.  As  was  shown  in  preceding  pages, 
Biicher  laid  stress  upon  the  instinctive  cries  and  motions  of 
labour,  the  rhythm  of  individual  and  social  work.  Rhythm, 
he  insisted,  "  springs  from  the  organic  nature  of  man  "  ;  it  is 
automatic,  instinctive,^  and  nowhere  so  much  as  in  labour. 
Nor  were  the  realms  of  play  and  labour  very  far  apart. 
Treading  the  grapes  of  Dionysos,  treading  the  wild  dance  of 
Dionysos,  —  there  was  little  space  between  the  two  activities, 
and  no  distinction  at  all  so  far  as  rhythm  and  instinctive 
motion  were  concerned.  In  brief,  whether  one  takes  the 
instinct  of  play,  as  preparation  for  work,  with  Groos,  or 
the  play-excitement,  with  Donovan,  or  the  instinctive  rhythm 
furnished  by  work  pure  and  simple,  with  Biicher,  there  is 
ample  recognition  in  each  case  for  the  spontaneous,  and  in 
two  of  the  cases  for  the  communal,  as  essential  elements 
in  the  beginnings  of  poetry.  The  conclusions  of  psy- 
chology^ and  sociology  are  still  in  tune  with  the  dualism 
hinted  long  since  by  Aristotle,  and  stated  just  a  century  ago 
by  A.  W.  Schlegel.  Aristotle  referred  the  beginning  of 
poetry  to  two  instincts,  —  imitation  and  "  the  instinct  for 
harmony  and  rhythm  "  ;  but  the  art  itself  came  only  with 
individual  effort.  "  Persons  .  .  .  with  this  natural  gift  little 
by  little  improved  upon  their  early  efforts  till  their  rude 
improvisations  gave  birth  to  poetry.  Poetry  now  branched 
off  in  two  directions  accordmg  to  the  individual  cJiaracter 
of  the  writersy^  So,  too,  he  speaks  of  tragedy,  which, 
like  comedy,  "was  at  first  mere  improvisation,"  festal  excite- 
ment of  the  throng  ;  ^  and  there  is  the  same  hint  of  communal 
spontaneity  coming  under  artistic  control  when  Aristotle  notes 
that  " /Eschylus  diminished  the  importance  of  the  chorus," 

^  Arbeit  und  Rhythmtis,  pp.  17,  25,  82. 

2  In  Ribot's  Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  e.g.,  p.  332,  ample  justice  is  done  to 
spontaneous  emotion  and  expression. 
^  See  Butcher's  translation,  pp.   15  flf. 

*  So  Butcher  explains,  p.  252:  "a  wild  religious  excitement,  a  bacchic  ecstasy." 
2B 


370  THE   BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

and  when  he  speaks  of  a  time  when  "  poetry  was  of  the 
satyric  order,  and  had  greater  affinities  with  dancing.''  Would 
there  were  more  historical  work  of  this  sort  from  that  "  hon- 
est and  keen-eyed  observer,"  as  Schlegel  calls  him !  Could 
the  dualism  be  more  plainly  set  forth  ?  Doring^  points  out  that 
Aristotle  distinguishes  two  kinds  of  dithyramb;  one  is  natural, 
spontaneous,  improvised,  and  this  is  nothing,  in  his  eyes,  but 
the  raw  material  of  poetry ;  the  other  is  the  dithyramb  of  art. 
Schlegel's  position  has  been  defined  already,  but  part  of 
a  brief  ^  for  a  lecture  which  was  never  written  out,  may  be 
noted  as  in  point ;  he  is  more  generous  to  the  ruder  stage  of 
verse  than  Aristotle  seems  to  be.  "  The  idea  of  a  natural 
history  of  poetry  .  .  .  End  of  this.  Transition  to  art  ajid  to 
the  conscio?iS7iess  of  it.  All  primitive,  original  songs  inspira- 
tion of  the  inofnent."  Now  the  evidence  of  ethnology  has  set 
this  last  remark  upon  the  surest  base ;  ^  no  fact  is  better  es- 
tablished for  savage  poetry.  Creatures  of  impulse,  without 
individual  thinking,  without  individual  plan  and  purpose,  with 
uniform  and  circumscribed  conditions,  with  homogeneous  na- 
tures, they  are  swayed  by  communal  emotion  to  a  degree 
which  seems  incredible  to  the  man  of  culture.  Schlegel  him- 
self had  an  eye  on  this  sort  of  evidence.  Speaking  *  of  the 
songs  before  Homer,  he  calls  them  "quite  artless  outpourings 
of  lyrical  impulse";  they  were  "made  up  of  a  few  simple 
words  and  outcries,  constantly  repeated,  such  as  we  find  to- 
day among  savages."  Again,  returning  to  the  dualism  of 
instinctive  and  artistic,  one  may  note  his  happy  phrase  for 

^  Ktinstlehre  des  Aristoteles,  Jena,  1876,  pp.  ^y"^  ff.  Gerber,  Die  Sprache  ah 
Ktinst,  I.  32,  follows  Aristotle  in  denying  that  improvisations  are  ever  poetry, 
which  is  enthusiasm  plus  deliberation  and  selection. 

2  Vorlesungen,  I.  356  ff.     Compare  I.  340. 

8  Waitz-Gerland,  Anthropologie,  I.  (2d.  ed.),  345. 

*  Vorlesungen,  II.  117,  119.  He  calls  the  Homeric  epos  an  artistic  improvisa- 
tion as  compared  with  earlier  spontaneous ,  instinctive  improvisation.  See  also 
II.  20. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  371 

it  when  he  speaks  ^  of  "  the  change  of  nature-purpose  into 
art-purpose." 

A  deeper  study  of  this  change,  a  study  of  the  beginnings 
and  development  of  Hellenic  poetry,  was  made  in  one  of  the 
earlier  and  saner  works  of  Nietzsche,^  written  while  he  was 
still  in  philological  harness  and  before  he  broke  with  Wagner. 
Art,  he  thinks,  depends  on  the  enduring  strife  and  occasional 
reconciliation  of  two  opposing  forces  which  the  Greeks  em- 
bodied in  Dionysos  and  Apollo.  Apollo  finds  expression  in 
sculpture,  in  the  individual  work  of  art,  Dionysos  in  the 
impersonal  art  of  music ;  the  genius  of  Greece  united  these 
two  in  Attic  tragedy.  Apollo  is  the  personification  of  that 
principmni  individnationis,  the  deification  of  man  as  artist, 
as  the  solitary  boatman  whom  Schopenhauer  imagined^ 
driven  and  tossed  in  this  frail  bark  of  individuality  upon  a 
sea  of  troubles.  Now  "  individual  "  is  as  much  as  to  say 
bounded,  definite,  restricted ;  hence  the  Hellenic  dishke  of 
exaggeration,  its  love  of  artistic  reticence  and  restraint, 
and  that  "  Know  Thyself "  as  final  word  of  the  god  who 
is  simply  a  deification  of  the  individual.  But  there  is  the 
other  side.  From  time  to  time,  say  in  intoxication,  which 
has  its  god  in  all  popular  mythologies,  or  in  those  great 
upheavals  of  communal  emotion  due  to  victory,  to  love, 
to  the  coming  of  spring,  rises  the  Dionysian  impulse  and 
shatters  all  sense  of  the  individual.  Such  a  movement 
made  the  chorus  of  the  Greeks  as  well  as  the  St.  John  and 
the  St.  Vitus  dances  of  mediaeval  Europe.  Man  the  in- 
dividual, so  Nietzsche  puts  it  in  his  own  dithyrambic  style, 
sinks  back,  a  prodigal  son,  into  the  bosom  of  that  nature 
which    he  has  deserted.     "  By  song  and    dance  man  shows 

1  Ibid.,  III.  141,  —  a  mere  note  for  his  lecture. 

*  Die  Geburt  der  Tragodie,  oder  Griechenthum  und  Pessimismus,  3d,  ed. 
1894;  the  immediate  title,  however,  is  Die  Geburt  der  Tragodie  aus  dem  Geiste 
der  Musik. 

*  Welt  ah  Wille,  etc.,  I.  416.     Nietzsche,  pp.  22,  35  f. 


372 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 


himself  a  member  of  the  higher  unity;  he  forgets  how  to 
walk,  to  talk ;  he  is  on  the  way,  dancing  and  leaping  as  he 
goes,  fairly  to  fly  aloft.  His  gestures  tell  of  the  magic  which 
holds  him.  .  .  .  He  is  no  longer  artist^  he  is  art,''  —  and  all 
this  in  the  communal,  Dionysian  frenzy,  the  folk  as  a  whole, 
and  the  individual  lost  in  the  throng.  Turba  fit  metis.  Here 
in  spontaneous  song,  dance,  gesture,  of  the  crowd  is  the 
opposite  of  that  reticent,  deliberative  Apollinian  art ;  "  this 
demonic  folksong"  is  set  over  against  the  "artist  of  Apollo, 
chanting  psalms  to  his  harp."^  The  Greek  dramatic 
chorus,  Nietzsche  goes  on  to  say,  is  simply  .the  old 
Dionysian  throng,  once  transformed  by  their  spontaneous 
excitement  into  satyrs,^  pure  nature  and  instinct,  now  con- 
ventionaHzed  and  brought  under  artistic  control ;  the  separa- 
tion of  chorus  and  spectators  is  artificial,  for  at  bottom  there 
is  no  difference  between  them,  and  all  make  a  single  body 
of  dancing  and  singing  satyrs,  —  that  is,  the  greater  part 
of  the  throng  now  dance  by  deputy.^  We  are  absurdly 
narrow,  he  thinks,  in  applying  modern  ideas  of  authorship  to 
primitive  conditions.  "  Dionysian  ecstasy,"  —  and  Nietzsche's 
fantastic  style*  should  not  hide  the  soundness  of  his  idea,  — 

1  Lyric  and  folksong,  according  to  Nietzsche,  p.  48,  are  outcome  of  music. 
"  Diesen  Prozess  einer  Entladung  der  Musik  in  Bildern  haben  wir  uns  auf  eine 
jugendfrische,  sprachlich  schopferische  Volksmenge  zuiibertragen,  um  zur  Ahnung 
zu  kommen,  wie  das  strophische  Volkslied  entsteht." 

2  The  usual  references  for  Bacchic  or  Dionysian  orgies  are  Livy,  IX.  4  f(., 
where  minute  particulars  are  given  ;   Strabo,  bk.  X.;   Athenceus,  X, 

^  In  Nietzsche's  mystic  phrase,  the  chorus  "auf  seiner  primitiven  Stufe  in  der 
Urtragodie,"  is  "eine  Sebstspiegelung  des  dionysischen  Menschen  .  .  .  eine 
Vision  der  dionysischen  Masse." 

*  See  pp.  60  f.  This  artistic  power  is  his  definition  of  the  poetic  process.  Pro- 
fessor Giddings,  on  hints  of  Mr.  Spencer,  has  drawn  a  picture  of  solitary,  primitive 
man  arguing  a  spirit  from  the  phenomenon  of  his  shadow  and  of  the  echo  of  his 
voice.  It  may  be  pointed  out  that  communal  shouts  and  cries,  echoed  from  the 
rocks,  would  he  more  likely  to  rouse  a  belief  in  that  horde  of  spirits  with  which 
the  primitive  human  horde  thought  itself  surrounded.  Early  religion  was  social, 
communal;  individual  meditation,  a  process  of  individual  thought,  was  utterly  sub- 
ordinate to  communal  thought.     Even  now  superstition  is  a  lingering  "they  say." 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  373 

"Dionysian  ecstasy  can  give  to  a  whole  throng  this  artistic 
power  of  seeing  itself  ringed  about  by  a  host  of  spiritual 
forms  with  which  it  feels  itself  essentially  one."  This 
passing  into  another  character  on  the  part  of  a  throng, 
homogeneous  of  course  and  instinctive,  is  the  beginning 
of  the  drama,  and  differs  from  the  work  of  the  rhapsodist. 
"  All  other  choral  lyric  of  the  Greeks,"  says  Nietzsche,  "  is 
only  the  Apollinian  solitary  singer  intensified ;  but  in  the 
dithyramb  there  stands  before  us  a  community  of  unconscious 
actors  ^  who  see  one  another  as  transformed."  The  drama, 
in  short,  came  from  the  union  of  a  Dionysian  spontaneous, 
communal  song,  in  itself  chaotic  outburst  of  passion,  and  the 
ordering,  restraining,  artistic,  deliberative  spirit  which  breathed 
order  into  this  chaos  and  is  known  as  the  spirit  of  Apollo. 
Thinking  on  the  functions  of  this  artistic,  Apollinian  spirit, 
one  is  reminded  of  De  Vigny's  definition  of  art,  as  "  la  verite 
choisie  "^;  while  it  is  clear  that  in  the  cadences  of  his  verse, 
and  in  the  emotion  that  surges  through  it,  the  poet  is  still  a  part 
of  that  Dionysian  throng.  In  a  word,  the  Apollinian  process, 
which  is  the  only  process  one  now  connects  with  one's  idea 
of  art,  or  of  poetry,  intellectualizes  and  therefore  individual- 
izes emotion.  An  instructive  essay  by  Dr.  Krejci^  regards 
the  fundamental  duahsm  of  poetry  as  a  contrast  between  the 
involuntary  or  mechanical  element,  and  the  element  of  logical 
or  voluntary  creation.  As  we  follow  back  the  course  of  poetry, 
he  asserts,  the  voluntary  and  creative  element  decreases, 
while  there  is  a  steady  gain  in  the  automatic,  the  mechani- 
cal, and  the  spontaneous,  —  a  gain  which  is  made  still  more 
probable  by  Blicher's  theory  of  rhythm.  If  one  could  see 
the  conditions  and  hear  the  songs  of  a  primitive  time,  one 
would  find  poetry,  so  Krejci  makes  bold  to  assert,  entirely 

'  "  Eine  Gemeinde  von  unbewussten  Schauspielern,"  p.  61. 
"^  Journal  dUtn  Poete,  p.  38. 

3  "  Das  charakteristische  Merkmal  der  Volkspoesie,"  Zeitschr.f.  Volkerpsychol., 
XIX.  (18S9),  115  ff. 


374  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

swayed  by  the  unreflective,  mechanical,  and  spontaneous  ele- 
ment^ In  this  sense,  Apollo  is  thought  mastering  emotion, 
art  in  control  of  that  spontaneous,  chaotic,  and  yet  rhythmic 
expression  of  the  Dionysian  throng. 

Instinctive  and  spontaneous  expression,  then,  is  to  be 
assumed  for  primitive  song ;  but  the  communal  idea  involves 
something  more.  It  demands  a  homogeneous  body  of  peo- 
ple. Again  tradition  points  this  way,  as  in  the  case  of 
rhythm  and  of  the  dualism  between  nature  and  art;  again, 
as  before,  voices  are  raised  in  protest;  again  M.  Tarde  is  in 
the  field  with  a  formula  directly  opposed  to  the  formula  of 
tradition ;  and  again  we  must  turn  to  modern  science  for 
some  definite  answer,  only  to  find  it  fairly  in  favour  of  tradi- 
tion and  backed  in  this  respect  by  ample  evidence  from  eth- 
nology and  literature.  Modern  psychology,  it  seems,  leaves 
one  free  to  conceive  a  throng  of  primitive  men  so  homogene- 
ous that  a  common  emotion  would  call  out  a  common  and 
simultaneous  expression.  Thoughts  diverge,  and  thought,  or 
purpose,  controls  modern  art  as  it  controls  modern  emotion  ; 
but  primitive  folk  did  little  thinking,  if  one  may  here  trust 
ethnology  and  the  savage,  backed  by  the  controlling  evolu- 
tionary facts  of  literature.^  Savage  thinking  is  limited  to  the 
few  objects  of  the  savage  world,  and  any  effort  beyond  this 
is  painful ;  the  wild  man  complains  of  headache  the  moment 
he  is  forced  to  "think."  Deliberation  implies  memory,  and 
purpose  regards  future  complications ;  but  we  saw  that  the 
Botocudos  have  no  legends,  and  we  know  how  accurately  care 
for  future  needs  marks  progress  in  culture ;  barring  those 
ancestral  shadows,  as  with  Eskimos,  it  is  true  of  all  savages 
that  they  have  no  history  at  all.  So  utterly  disappears  our 
sharp  individual  thinking  as  one  touches  savage  life.  Herod- 
otus was  surprised  to  find  a  tribe  "  that  had  no  name  "  ;  but, 

1  Zeitschr.f.  Vdlkerpsychol.,  XIX.,  p.  120. 

2  See  Schultze,  Der  Fetischistnus,  pp.  30  ff.,  with  his  authorities. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  375 

as  Schultze  notes,  Bushmen  now  do  not  know  one  another 
by  any  individual  appellation.  The  language  of  all  savage 
tribes  reflects  this  lack  of  individual  thinking  in  our  sense ; 
and  it  is  to  tribal  emotion,  instincts  of  tribal  life  and  their 
social  expression,  that  one  always  looks  for  what  must  pass 
as  the  intellectual  life  of  the  savage.  The  individual  savages 
do  not  think,  but  they  feel;  and  feelings,  unlike  thoughts, 
tend  to  converge.  Nor,  again,  a  most  important  point,  is  the 
communal  elation  of  the  primitive  throng  to  be  confused  with 
the  imitation  of  a  modern  crowd,  yielding,  after  individual 
mental  suicide,  to  the  suggestions  of  a  leader  who  does  the 
thinking  while  the  crowd  acts  out  his  thought.  Ethnology 
records  the  fact,  but  few  if  any  scholars  have  noted  its  sig- 
nificance, that  savages  are  formidable  and  command  civilized 
respect  in  proportion  as  they  act  in  mass  and  as  a  unit,  while 
modem  man  is  contemptible  in  the  mass ;  modern  man  is 
formidable  as  an  individual,  while  the  individual  savage  is 
little  better  than  an  idiot.  Detached  from  the  throng  in  which 
and  by  which  he  thinks,  feels,  acts,  he  is  a  silent,  stolid  fellow, 
into  whose  silence  romantic  folk  like  Chateaubriand  and 
Cooper  have  read  vast  philosophies,  and  from  whose  forced 
conversation,  uncentred  and  mobile  as  a  child's,  missionaries 
have  drawn  most  of  their  conflicting  and  suspicious  state- 
ments about  savage  myths,  customs,  beliefs,  and  ways  of 
thought.  Evidence  about  savages  in  the  mass,  about  their 
communal  life,  on  the  other  hand,  is  nearly  all  straightfor- 
ward and  consistent.  Hence  a  conclusion  of  vast  reach  and 
meaning  for  the  beginnings  of  poetry:  just  as  individuals  are 
superior  now,  just  as  the  mob,  the  masses,  the  profatmin  val- 
gus, what  not,  are  objects  of  contempt  in  these  latter  days,^  so 

^  Two  famous  utterances  voice  this  feeling.  Swift  loved  his  Peter,  Paul,  John, 
and  the  rest;  he  hated  the  human  race  at  large.  This  for  the  outer  circle.  As 
for  crowds,  Schiller  put  the  antithesis  in  a  distich  :  — 

Jeder,  sieht  man  ihn  einzeln,  ist  leidlich  klug  und  bestandig; 

Sind  sie  in  corpore,  gleich  wird  euch  ein  Dummkopf  daraus. 


376  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

this  mob,  these  masses,  were  far  and  away  superior  to  indi- 
viduals in  conditions  of  primitive  life  and  at  the  start  of  social 
progress.  By  the  very  terms  of  the  case,  and  in  the  struggle 
for  existence,  social  man  was  forced  to  win  the  early  fight 
by  social  consent,  and  this  was  the  overwhelming  fact  to 
which  all  individual  considerations  had  to  yield.  This  supe- 
riority attached,  of  course,  to  what  the  mass  did  and  said  and 
sang  as  compared  with  individual  utterance.  Human  nature 
remains  unchanged,  but  human  conditions  are  always  chang- 
ing. One  must  not  treat  primitive  man,  with  regard  to  the 
conditions  and  outcome  of  his  life,  in  terms  of  modern  man. 
The  mob,  the  masses,  exist  for  us  mainly  as  the  raw  material 
of  social  and  political  factions.  Lack  of  bread,  of  work,  or 
the  infringement  of  fancied  rights,  leads  to  a  common  and 
intense  emotion,  the  first  requisite  of  mass  movement ;  a 
leader  of  some  sort,  with  a  plan  which  comes  of  more  or  less 
thinking,  sways  the  mob  to  a  definite  act.  But  the  behaviour 
of  a  mob,  the  doing  and  expression  of  a  mob,  are  now  in  sharp 
antithesis  to  that  doing  and  expression  of  individual  men 
at  the  bidding  of  individual  thought,  of  deliberation,  plan,  and 
definite  purpose.  Conditions  of  primitive  life,  so  all  evidence 
goes  to  prove,  reversed  this  order ;  and  it  is  a  totally  evil 
process  when  one  transfers  the  value  of  a  modern  mass  of 
men  to  the  communal  throng,  the  horde,  if  one  will,  which 
began  our  social  progress.  Hence  the  error  in  Tarde's  in- 
genious argument.^  Attacking  the  idea  that  a  mass  of  men 
ever  created  language,  he  conceives  the  mass  in  terms  of  a 
mob,  language  in  terms  of  our  highly  intellectualized  and 
individualized  speech  ;  and  he  applies  the  same  impossible 
test  to  religion  and  to  poetry.  Who,  he  cries,  "ever  saw  a 
masterpiece  of  art  .  .  .  planned  and  wrought  out  by  the  col- 
lective inspiration  of  ten  or  a  hundred  poets  or  artists  ? " 
None  of  us,  certainly,  save  in  some  form  of  survival  hard  to 

'  "  Foules  et  Sectcs,"  in  Essais  el  Melanges  Social.,  p.  4. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  377 

recognize,  has  seen  such  a  thing.  Primitive  man,  on  the 
other  hand,  knew  nothing  of  a  poetical  masterpiece  in  M. 
Tarde's  sense.  When  communal  "inspiration"  was  dominant, 
when  the  throng  absorbed  the  individual,  when  thought  hardly 
dared  to  show  its  soHtary  visage  before  a  solid  communal 
emotion,  the  masterpiece  of  art,  that  is,  of  individual  planning, 
hardly  had  a  place ;  under  modern  conditions  of  individual 
thinking,  communal  emotion  is  just  as  unproductive  in  the 
aesthetic  realm.  The  masterpiece  waited  for  the  master  ;  and 
one  remembers  M.  Tarde's  delusion  about  the  origins  of  all 
poetry  in  some  "great  book."  In  stating  his  case  for  the  artist, 
which  is  perfectly  true  for  modern  conditions,  he  is  really 
stating  the  case,  by  imphcation,  for  primitive  communal  song. 
But  was  this  throng  really  homogeneous .''  Are  the  facts 
in  accord  with  this  theory  of  communal  conditions  and  the 
outcome  of  them  ?  Mr.  Spencer,  as  every  one  knows,  laid 
down  the  law  that  all  social  progress  is  from  the  homo- 
geneous to  the  heterogeneous ;  ^  and  M.  Brunetiere  has 
adopted  this  principle  as  a  guide  to  the  study  of  literary 
development,^  regarding  it  as  the  one  doctrine  of  evolution, 
held  by  Spencer  as  by  Haeckel,  which  stands  the  test  of 
criticism  and  is  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt.  The  history  of 
culture,  so  M.  le  Bon  thinks,^  points  the  same  way;  "counter 
to  our  dreams  of  equality,  the  result  of  modern  civilization 
is  not  to  make  men  more  and  more  equal,  but  to  make  them 

1  Principles  of  Sociology,  I.  459,  704  f.  Tribe  to  nation,  I.  584.  Rise  of  pro- 
fessions due  to  "specialization  of  a  relatively  homogeneous  mass,"  III.  181.  See 
II.  307  ff.  In  the  First  Principles,  §§  125,  127,  he  had  defined  the  process  as 
"  change  from  an  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  coherent  heterogeneity,"  and  had 
applied  the  idea  not  only  to  the  primitive  union  of  poetry,  music,  and  dancing, 
but  within  poetic  limits  to  that  undifferentiated  song  which  held  in  germ  the  epic, 
the  lyric,  the  drama. 

2  Revue  des  deux  Mondes,  15  Feb.,  1898,  p.  880;  "  le  passage  de  I'homogene  a 
I'heterogene,"  that  "  idee  mere,  I'idee  substantielle  de  revolution  ";  or  in  Haeckel's 
words,  "  gradual  differentiation  of  matter  originally  simple." 

3  I? Evolution  des  Peuples,  pp.  37  f.     See  also  pp.  43,  167. 


378  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

more  and  more  different."  Comte  assumed  that  the  common 
trait  of  biology  and  sociology  is  this  passing  from  the  whole 
to  the  parts ;  and  although  Mr.  Spencer,  with  his  doctrine  of 
cells,  has  largely  set  Comte  aside,  that  part  of  the  old  system 
is  intact.  Popular  books,  supposed  to  sum  up  the  best 
results  of  science,  are  to  the  same  effect.  In  primitive 
times,  says  Reclus,^  "  all  felt,  thought,  and  acted  in  concert. 
Everything  leads  us  to  believe  that  at  the  outset  collectivism 
was  at  its  maximum  and  individualism  at  its  minimum.  The 
individual,"  he  declares,  "was  not  the  father  of  society; 
society  was  the  mother  of  the  individual."  Studies  of  pre- 
historic man,  as  in  the  stone  age,  point  to  a  sameness  of 
individuals  now  quite  impossible  to  imagine.^  Hennequin  is 
not  with  Tarde  on  this  point ;  the  primitive  community  was 
homogeneous,  and  its  members  "  were  all  nearly  exactly 
ahke  in  body  and  in  mind."  ^  Gumplowicz  is  explicit  for  the 
beginning  of  society  in  homogeneous  hordes.*  A  recent 
writer  who  has  made  a  study  of  the  horde  and  the  family  in 
primitive  development,^  and  who  is  by  no  means  of  the 
extreme  school,  —  he  rejects  promiscuity,  for  example,  — 
declares  the  horde  to  have  been  the  starting-point  of  social 
progress.  Grosse,  casting  about  for  a  state  of  savage  life 
which  shall  give  the  best  idea  of  the  life  of  primitive  man, 
finds  it  in  a  "  homogeneous,  undifferentiated  mass,"  thus 
backing  Spencer  at  least  in  his  sociological  assertion ;  ^  and 

1  Prhtiitive  Folk,  p.  57. 

^  So  the  reviews  summarize  the  doctrine  of  A.  H.  Keane,  Man  Past  and 
Present,  1899. 

^  Critique  Scieniifique,  pp.  112,  115. 

*  In  the  Rassenkampf,  and  especially  in  Outlines  of  Sociology,  trans.  Moore, 
PP-  39>  124,  139  note;  on  p.  142  he  names  the  factors  which  made  a  horde  homo- 
geneous. 

^  Dr.  Richard  Mucke,  Horde  und  Familie  in  ihrer  urgeschichtlichen  Entwick- 
lung,  Stuttgart,  1895. 

8  Grosse,  Formen  der  Familie,  pp.  30  ff .  See  p.  39.  He  takes  as  "  repre- 
sentatives of  the  oldest  form  of  social   life"  those  scattered  tribes  which  subsist 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  379 

the  best  authorities  bear  out  this  view.  The  hordes  which 
serve,  in  lack  of  better  ethnological  material,  as  the  type  of 
primitive  man,  are  small  and  scattered ;  they  have  no  arts, 
no  division  of  labour ;  individual  property  is  almost  unknown, 
and  the  one  piece  of  property,  their  hunting-ground,  belongs 
to  all  the  adult  males  in  common.  As  little  difference  of 
rank  exists  as  of  property ;  seldom  are  there  any  leaders,  and 
where,  in  a  few  cases,  these  are  found,  their  authority  is 
pitifully  small.  The  only  individuals  who  break  this  "  homo- 
geneous and  undifferentiated  "  monotony  are  the  supposed 
possessors  of  a  magical  power.^  So  runs  the  certainly  un- 
prejudiced account  of  Grosse.  Even  by  Sir  Henry  Maine's 
extreme  patriarchal  views,  the  family  itself,  the  first  social 
group,  was  a  homogeneous  and  undifferentiated  mass  in 
those  characteristics  with  which  the  student  of  poetry  must 
deal.  Mr.  Tylor's  group  of  Caribs,^  with  uniformity  of 
physical  and  mental  structure,  amply  bears  out  the  com- 
munal and  homogeneous  argument  for  earliest  song ;  but 
perhaps  the  shortest  way  with  dissenters  is  a  passage  by 
Waitz,^  where  he  sums  up  the  evidence  for  this  uniformity 
of  the  individuals  in  a  horde  and  in  social  groups  of  a  low 
order.  All  their  relations  of  life,  he  says,  are  simple,  and 
are  bent  in  one  direction,  the  procuring  of  food ;  there  is  a 
maximum  of  instinct  and  common  appetite,  and  almost  no 

entirely  by  hunting;  we  know  nothing  so  primitive,  and  while  checked  in  culture, 
these  tribes  are  probably  not  degraded  (32  f.).  The  statements  in  the  text  are 
based  on  careful  arrangement  of  the  statistics,  a  very  important  point.  See  Mucke, 
Horde  und  Familie,  pp.  181  ff.  Spencer  describes  the  "  small,  simple  aggregates," 
cooperating  "  with  or  without  a  regulating  centre,  for  certam  public  ends,"  of 
which  the  "headless"  kind  must  be  regarded  as  the  primitive  type  ;  and  gives  a 
list  of  these  not  very  different  from  the  list  of  Grosse.     Prin.  Soc,  I.  §  257. 

1  Grosse  refuses  to  extend  this  lack  of  individual  power  to  promiscuity  in  sexual 
relations.  That  precious  theory  was  doubtless  carried  to  an  absurd  point;  but  the 
reaction  may  likewise  go  too  far,  and  the  case  of  those  Andamanese  (p.  43)  with 
their  "  absolute  conjugal  fidelity  even  unto  death,"  uncannily  suggests  Sir  Charles 
Grandison  and  even  Isaac  Walton's  mullet. 

2  Anthropology,  p.  79,  8  Anthropologic,  I.  74  ff.,  349  ff. 


38o  THE  BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

stir  of  mind  such  as  follows  the  division  of  labour  ;  and  this 
uniform  mental  habit  works  upon  the  outward  person,  so 
that,  physically  as  well  as  intellectually,  the  single  man  fails 
to  stand  out  from  the  mass.  Waitz,  who  quotes  Humboldt 
to  the  same  purpose,  thus  explains  why  the  Romans,  with 
their  complicated  civilization,  found  the  Germans  all  looking 
alike,  all  of  one  type.^  Wherever  the  horde  is  visible,  even 
in  a  comparatively  civilized  case,  as  with  the  Scottish  clans, 
there  the  resemblance  of  individuals,  the  emphasis  of  a  type, 
is  unmistakable ;  and  it  is  precisely  under  these  conditions 
that  we  find  the  survivals  of  communal  song.  Primitive 
man,  moreover,  dependent  on  the  nature  about  him,  and 
acting  in  his  horde  like  other  creatures  in  the  face  of  a 
power  which  they  fear,  surrounded  himself  with  a  like  horde 
of  spirits,^  themselves  as  little  differentiated  or  distinguished 
in  any  way  as  the  human  horde  which  conceived  them. 
Even  under  the  highest  civilization  such  conditions  of  the 
horde  survive  in  communal  worship.  True,  the  informing 
power  of  Christianity  is  its  individualism,  its  "  flight  of  the 
one  to  the  One  " ;  but  the  litany,  the  general  confession,  the 
spirit  of  congregational  worship,  are  suggestive  not  so  much 
of  the  "  O  God,  I  "  as  of  the  "  O  Spirits,  We,"  —  homage  once 
paid  by  all  the  living  souls  to  all  the  souls  of  the  dead, 
and  still  lingering  as  a  shadowy  survival  in  two  great  festi- 
vals of  the  church.  Religious  emotion  is  still  the  strongest 
communal  element  in  modern  times,  particularly  when  it 
takes  the  form  of  a  great  revival. 

Against  all  this  in  general  and  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  in 
particular,  M.  Tarde,  as  was  noted,  set  up  his  theory  of  the 
infinitesimal  and  the  cell ;  against  the  narrower  idea  of 
differentiation  in  poetry,  —  epic,  lyric,  and  dramatic  regarded 
as  developments  from  an  earlier  compact  form  in  which  the 

^  Waitz,  I.  446,  answers  objections  to  this  view,  and  disposes  of  the  idea  that 
civilization  levels  mankind.  *  gee  above,  p.  372,  note  4. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  38 1 

three  were  still  united,  —  Professor  Grosse,^  who  was  so  bold 
in  his  assertion  of  homogeneous  life,  asserts  heterogeneous 
poetry  from  the  beginning.  Yet  he  presently  lays  down  ^  the 
larger  truth,  which  carries  with  it  a  confusion  of  his  own 
particular  denial  on  poetic  grounds.  "  In  the  lowest  stage  of 
culture,"  he  says,  "  art  appears,  at  least  for  us,  simply  and 
only  as  a  social  phenomenon.  ...  In  the  higher  stages, 
however,  along  with  the  influence  which  art  exerts  upon 
social  life,  there  comes  more  and  more  into  view  the  value 
of  art  for  the  development  of  individual  life.  .  .  .  Between 
the  individual  and  the  social  fimction  of  art  is  a  deep 
antithesis^  In  other  words,  he  proves  by  his  admirably 
selected  facts,  throughout  the  whole  book,  that  the  art  of 
primitive  times  was  mainly  social,  whereas  the  art  of  modern 
times  is  mainly  individual.  Moreover,  he  is  very  sure  that 
primitive  society  was  homogeneous.  The  inference  is  inevi- 
table. Dr.  Wallaschek,  we  saw,  set  down  the  "  collectiveness 
of  amusement  "  as  main  characteristic  of  primitive  life.  These 
things  cannot  be  said  in  one  breath,  only  to  be  followed  in 
another  by  such  amazing  contradictions  as  the  implication  of 
Grosse  ^  that  the  egoist  in  man  is  the  first  of  poets,  or  the 
jaunty  talk  of  Scherer  about  primitive  poets  and  their  public, 
their  royalties,  their  authorship,  when  only  a  few  pages  away 
he  tells  us  that  "  mass  poetry,"  poetry  of  the  throng,  is  the 
differencing  element  in  primitive  aesthetic  life.  Posnett,  to 
whom  all  students  of  poetry  are  under  deep  obligations  for 
his  vigorous  sketch  of  comparative  literature,  does  justice  to 
the  communal  element  in  early  song  and  reduces  the  indi- 
vidual, heterogeneous  element  to  a  minimum  ;  his  formula 
for  poetic  development  is  "  the  progressive  deepening  and 
widening  of  personality."* 

J  Anfditge  der  Kunst,  p.  224.  ^  Ibid.,  pp.  300  f.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  236. 

*  Comparative  Literature,  p.  72.     See  pp.  89  ff.,  155  ff.,  347  f.,  and  the  whole 

chapter  on  "The  Principle  of  Literary  Growth."     He  glorifies  sympathy  as  the 


382  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

It  is  to  be  conceded  that  a  superficial  view  reverses  this 

order  of  progress.     What  does  one  meet  oftener  in  history 

and  song, — 

O  nimis  optato  saeclorum  tempore  nati, 
Heroes,  salvete,  deum  genus  !^  — 

than  talk  of  a  "  heroic  "  age  in  the  remote  past,  and  of  the 
commonplace,  average-ridden  present,  the  epoch,  as  Le  Bon 
calls  it,  of  crowds  ?  Against  the  mediocrity,  the  hustings,  the 
juries,  the  lynching-bees,  the  "  suffrage  of  the  plough,"  the 
dead  level  of  uninteresting  masses,  there  floats  up  a  vision  of 
the  knight  on  his  quest,  of  the  solitary  hero  at  odds,  Hke  Her- 
cules, with  divinity  itself,  of  the  good  old  king  who  sits  to  judge 
his  people  in  the  gates.  Have  not  we  moderns  the  homo- 
geneous mass,  and  was  not  the  individual  a  child  of  the  early 
world.''  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt-  finds  the  secret  of  Homer 
in  his  "  sense  of  individuality  "  and  "  individuahzing  impulse." 
Haym,  a  careful  writer,  talks  of  the  individualism  of  the 
Middle  Ages  as  opposed  to  modern  times.  Blemont^  admits 
that  democracy  is  individualism,  but  contends  that  it  makes 
for  anything  rather  than  for  individuality,  and  simply  levels 
human  life ;  the  mind  ceases  to  be  free,  and  men  act  in 
masses,  simplify  everything,  make  life  monotonous.  Against 
this,  however,  one  needs  only  to  recall  that  quotation  just 
made  from  Le  Bon ;  the  process  seems  to  be  toward  same- 
ness, but  is  really  toward  diversity.  Men  may  dress  alike, 
may  show  concerted  action,  may  discourage  the  unusual  and 
set  up  a  god  of  averages  ;  but  the  individual  is  stronger  than 
ever  before,  and  he  does  more  thinking  for  himself.  Men 
move  in  masses,  true ;  but  it  is  less  and  less  the  herd  instinct 
and    more   and   more  the  voluntary  coherence   of   thinking 

poetic  mainspring;  but  he  fails  to  study  the  duahsm  in  terms  of  actual  throng  and 
actual  artist.  The  spirit  and  plan  of  the  book,  however,  are  worthy  of  the  highest 
praise,  whatever  its  shortcomings  in  detail. 

'  Catullus,  Ixiv.         2  iVerke,  VI.  26.         ^  F.sthitiqtie  de  la  Tradition,  pp.  69  ff. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  383 

minds.  Instinct  has  yielded  to  thought.  The  history  of  civ- 
ilization is  the  making  and  unmaking  of  communities  ;  society 
means  more  than  it  ever  meant ;  but  this  is  not  denying 
the  fundamental  law  of  progress  from  homogeneous  to  hete- 
rogeneous, from  communal  to  individual  and  artistic.  One 
must  not  juggle  with  these  terms.  It  is  true  that  an  army,  a 
group  of  men  for  any  purpose,  which  marches  as  one  man, 
is  the  end  and  not  the  beginning  of  communal  effort.  It  is 
true  that  the  savage  is  notoriously  fitful ;  there  is  anything 
but  splendid  purpose  in  his  eyes ;  combined  action,  under 
certain  conditions  —  that  is,  conditions  of  civilization  —  is  dif- 
ficult even  for  members  of  one  tribe ;  their  prevailing  force 
seems  to  be  individual  and  centrifugal ;  the  bond  that  binds 
them  to  the  community  often  seems  slight  beyond  belief ;  as 
to  their  feelings,  just  now  assumed  to  be  almost  a  unit, 
"emotional  variability"  is  the  report  of  many  a  traveller.^ 
This  has  been  extended  to  primitive  life,  and  to  the  moral 
side  of  the  case ;  early  man,  says  Pulszky,^  was  ruled  by 
"  unqualified  selfishness,"  and  asserted  "  his  individuality  in 
every  respect."  The  same  author  speaks  of  "  a  gradation, 
the  first  word  of  which  is  selfishness,  and  the  last,  public  sen- 
timent." Where  in  all  this  coil  of  caprice  and  incoherence  is 
the  homogeneous  community  expressing  a  common  emotion 
by  a  common  utterance  .-'  The  answer  is  clear  enough.  Es- 
cape from  this  caprice,  this  incoherence,  this  centrifugal 
force,  is  found  primarily  in  social  consent,  in  the  communal 
utterance  which  began  the  long  struggle  against  purely  sel- 
fish ends ;  and  communal  utterance  begins,  as  has  been 
shown,  in  the  consent  of  rhythm.  Strong  as  the  selfish 
impulses  were,  so  strong  the  need  for  at  least  an  incipient 

1  Spencer,  Sociology,  I.  56  ff.,  70  f.,  II.  271,  note;  Grosse,  Formen  der  Familie, 
p.  57,  with  quotation  from  PetrofPs  book  on  Alaska;  Schultze,  Feiischismus, 
pp.  51  f. 

2  Tke  Theory  of  Law  and  Civil  Society,  London,  1888,  pp.  106  f.  See  above, 
p.  26. 


384  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

check  upon  them  in  social  action ;  and  from  social  action  and 
utterance  sprang  all  those  altruistic  virtues  which  Pulszky 
lauds  —  patriotism,  piety,  duty  to  kin  and  to  the  race.  The 
end  of  society  is  to  take  brute  man  and  make  him  a  civilized 
man,  to  let  "  the  ape  and  tiger  "  in  him  die  ;  man  when  nearest 
ape  and  tiger,  at  the  beginning  of  social  union,  was  individu- 
ally brutish,  stolid,  selfish,  idiotic,  fitful,  in  a  word,  individu- 
ally bad;  and  just  so  far  as  he  submitted  to  social  consent, 
lived  for  the  horde,  the  clan,  kin,  country,  so  far  he  was 
socially  good.  Hence  it  is  easy  to  see  that  in  this  homo- 
geneous society  all  the  beginnings  of  civilization,  art,  poetry, 
religion,  would  be  overwhelmingly  homogeneous,  social,  com- 
munal ;  the  condition  of  their  existence  was  the  abnegation 
of  the  individual  man  in  favour  of  the  social  man.  In  a 
word,  society  itself  began  in  this  social  consent,  and  since  it 
had  such  tremendous  forces  of  selfishness  arrayed  against  it 
in  the  primitive  individual  instincts,^  the  only  way  in  which 
it  could  make  its  way  was  by  utter  suppression  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  so  far  as  he  was  a  party  to  the  social  bond  itself. 
Hence  a  contradiction  that  is  only  apparent.  The  savage  as 
a  creature  of  animal  instinct  is  as  capricious  and  centrifugal  as 
one  will;  as  a  creature  of  social  act,  emotion,  thought,  he  has 
no  individuality,  and  puts  none  into  his  expression  ;  for  it  was 
precisely  this  tuition  of  social  consent  which  little  by  little  gave 
him  the  impulse  to  deed,  feeling,  deliberation,  as  member  of 
society.  Here  is  the  solution  of  the  problem.  Arab  boat- 
men who  can  not  pull  ropes  in  unison,^  sing  and  dance 
together  with  a  consent  that  astonishes  the  traveller.     They 

^  Professor  Baldwin,  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  p.  214,  puts  the 
beginning  of  the  social  period  just  after  man's  release  from  the  animal.  See  too  his 
appendix.  Ribot,  work  quoted,  p.  281,  says  the  gregarious  life  —  of  animals  in 
hordes,  that  is  —  "  is  founded  on  the  attraction  of  like  for  like,  irrespective  of  sex." 
See  this  whole  chapter  on  "  The  Social  and  Moral  Feelings." 

^  See,  however,  the  case  of  New  Zealanders  who  work  in  large  numbers  and  in 
perfect  accord  by  singing  their  song  totowaka.     Wallaschek,  Prim.  Mus.,  p.  43, 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  385 

are  capricious,  fitful  individuals  in  regard  to  the  new  kind  of 
work,  but  compact,  communal  society  in  regard  to  the  festal 
consent  which  united  their  wandering  hordes  thousands  of 
years  ago.  Descriptions  of  the  savage  state  easily  bear  out 
this  contradiction  and  this  solution,  if  one  will  analyze  the 
facts ;  and  this  is  why  one  finds  Spencer  and  Grosse  asserting 
on  one  page  the  homogeneity  and  collectiveness  of  savage 
communities,  and  on  another  page  the  heterogeneous,  capri- 
cious, individual,  selfish  traits  of  the  savage  himself.  In 
literature  we  do  not  so  clearly  see  both  sides.  Throng- 
poetry  is  rarely  recorded  ;  one  merely  describes  a  village  or 
tribal  chorus,  —  and  takes  down  the  individual  song.  Luck- 
ily, however,  the  "  collective  character  "  of  primitive  amuse- 
ment is  made  as  certain  as  such  things  can  be,  by  the  ethno- 
logical evidence  considered  in  the  chapter  on  rhythm,  by  the 
evidence  of  popular  survivals  collected  in  the  chapter  on 
communal  song  and  dance,  and  by  the  evolutionary  curves  of 
poetry  itself.  Considering  all  this  evidence,  one  escapes  the 
snare  laid  in  one's  path  by  the  idea  of  individualism  in  the 
savage.  That  "emotional  variability"^  is  individual  indeed, 
and  disappears  precisely  as  the  communal  expression  of 
emotion  comes  into  play.  It  has  been  proved,  too,  that,  like 
speech,  rhythmic  utterance  and  rhythm  itself  in  the  sense 
which  Bijcher  gives  to  it,  are  not  so  much  the  outcome  as 
the  occasion  of  social  union.  The  sense  of  this  union,  "the 
consciousness  of  kind  "  as  Professor  Giddings  calls  it,  is  at 
bottom  a  sense  of  order,  and  the  "  instinct  for  order  "  is  best 

^  Even  Mr.  Spencer  points  out  that  this  is  no  bar  to  communal  consent,  Soci- 
ology,!, i^g;  for  the  variability  implies  "smaller  departure  from  primitive  reflex 
action,  .  .  .  lack  of  the  re-representative  emotions  which  hold  the  simpler  ones  in 
check."  Bastian,  too,  has  shown  that  in  the  formation  of  society  out  of  individuals, 
the  social  element  as  such,  the  social  whole,  must  precede  the  element  of  social 
individuality  or  of  the  individuality  within  the  mass.  This  is  what  one  gathers 
from  Bastian's  books  in  general;  in  one  case,  Die  Welt  in  ihren  Spiegeluitgen 
tinter  dem  IVandel  des  Vbliergedankens,  p.  4.1  ^,he  applies  this  idea  to  the  priority 
of  social  property  as  compared  with  individual  property. 

2C 


386  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

expressed  in  rhythm  ;  rhythm,  it  was  seen,  is  not  invention 
and  imitation,  but  discovery  and  consent.  Anterior  to  any 
process  of  invention  and  imitation,  which  is  a  social  act,  must 
be  the  condition  which  makes  this  act  possible,  —  a  conscious- 
ness of  kind  and  a  social  consent.  Instinctive  emotions  of  a 
homogeneous  horde  felt  in  common  on  a  great  occasion 
gave  birth  to  a  common  expression  in  which  the  separate  indi- 
viduals discovered  this  social  consent.  Invention  and  imita- 
tion, begun  as  early  as  one  will  after  this  social  consent,  gave 
them  the  conditions  of  their  activity  ;  but  they  must  not 
be  put  before  it,  nor,  for  considerable  stretches  of  social 
development,  could  they  be  said  to  have  an  important  place^ 
since  they  grew  with  the  growing  importance  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  society.  If  one  may  dogmatize  on  the  matter,  one 
may  think  of  three  gradations  in  social  progress.  First,  there 
is  the  consent  due  mainly  to  external  suggestion  working  on 
instinctive  movements  :  in  the  dance  it  is  due  to  that  festive  joy 
of  victory  and  that  "  rhythmic  beating"  outward,  that  rhyth- 
mic impulse  inward,  which  Donovan  describes ;  and  in  labour, 
as  Biicher  thinks  of  it,  it  is  either  the  consent  of  a  solitary 
labourer  with  the  labour  itself,  or,  more  often,  the  consent  of 
several  labourers  with  those  instinctive  and  necessary  move- 
ments. Vocal  and  significant  cries  went  with  the  movements 
in  each  case.  Secondly,  but  contemporary  with  the  other, 
one  may  figure  a  less  festal  occasion  and  a  more  active  per- 
sonal agency ;  five  or  six  men  marching  abreast  fall  into  step 
and  find  the  labour  of  marching  is  hghtened,  —  not  a  very 
different  matter  from  the  dance,  but  less  communal  and  more 
unrestrained.  Imitation  comes  slightly  into  play,  but  it  is 
wholly  subordinate  to  consent.  Thirdly,  imitation  and  inven- 
tion get  their  rights  where  the  individual  discovers  or  invents 
an  isolated  act,  in  various  degrees  of  artistic  and  social  sig- 
nificance, from  the  jump  over  an  obstacle  by  the  leader  in  a 
row  of  men  marching  in  Indian  file,  the  sheep-over-a-fence 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL  POETRY  387 

process,  as  Mr.  Lloyd  Morgan  calls  it,  up  to  the  clever  throwing 
of  a  spear,  the  tying  together  of  two  vine  branches,  the  fash- 
ioning of  a  spear-head,  which  are  invention  outright,  triumph 
of  individual  thinking,  plan  and  deliberation  detached  from 
communal  emotion.  The  leader  is  on  hand;  the  "  headless" 
hordes  have  heads.  Spontaneity,  instinct,  the  automatic, 
still  dominant  in  communal  dance  and  song,  in  reminiscential 
rites  of  every  sort,  have  yielded  in  active  life  to  thought  and 
purpose  of  the  individual,  to  division  of  labour,  to  that  power 
to  plan  a  protracted  piece  of  work  and  carry  it  out  in  detail 
which  makes  for  progress.  But  before  this  formula  of  inven- 
tion and  imitation  can  apply,  before  one  talks  of  the  leader 
and  the  led,  there  must  be  a  coherent  body  which  can  resolve 
itself  into  these  relations  of  parts  ;  and  precisely  here  is  the 
beginning  of  society  in  social  consent,  and  here,  too,  the 
beginning  of  poetry  in  communal  and  rhythmic  utterance. 
One  thus  faces  a  seeming  paradox  in  the  conception  of 
poetry  as  at  once  the  highest  expression  of  the  differentiated, 
deliberate,  artistic  individual,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  fullest 
expression  of  a  homogeneous,  spontaneous,  automatic  mass ; 
the  paradox  vanishes  at  once  if  one  will  only  see  in  rhythm 
consent  and  emotional  cadence  of  a  dancing,  singing  multi- 
tude, and  in  artistic  phrase  and  thought  the  deliberate  control 
and  plan  of  the  individual,  —  Apollo  in  the  foreground,  and 
the  background  filled  with  a  festal  Dionysian  throng.  Why 
refuse  to  see  this  social  background,  or,  in  another  figure, 
this  communal  foundation  of  poetry  ?  Guyau  puts  beyond 
doubt  the  essentially  social  character  of  the  art,  even  under 
modern  conditions ;  but  one  makes  a  phrase,  and  returns  to 
the  old  way.  A  long  succession  of  deliverances  on  solitary 
genius  has  befogged  the  critical  vision  and  blotted  this  lode- 
star of  social  conditions  from  the  sky.  In  other  fields  such 
a  mistake  is  unknown.  The  student  of  political  science 
would  never  deny  that  a  representative  in  Congress,  as  his 


388  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

name  implies,  is  the  deputy  of  a  throng  that  once,  say  in  the 
forests  of  Germany,  would  have  come  together  as  a  compact 
legislative  body  and  settled  questions  of  state.  But  in 
poetry  the  poet  ends  and  the  poet  began,  a  creature  of  soli- 
tude, now  in  commerce  with  the  immensities  and  infinities, 
and  now  holding  out  his  hat  to  the  public  for  a  honorarimn, — 
the  public's  only  part  in  the  poetic  process.  If  the  public  is 
brought  in,  it  is  to  explain  the  poet,  as  with  Sainte-Beuve  and 
Taine,  or  to  explain  the  gentle  reader,  as  with  Hennequin. 
Poetry  is  a  whisper,  a  confidence,  to  this  gentle  reader. 
When  the  throng,  not  to  speak  of  the  silence  about  its  active 
functions  in  poetry,  catches  up  a  poem  that  it  likes,  and 
roars  it,  as  it  roared  Mr.  Kipling's  Absent-minded  Beggar, 
over  all  England,  this  is  very  salt  in  the  wounds  of  the  critic, 
who  declares,  with  some  justice,  that  here  is  no  "poetry  "  at 
all ;  while  the  same  author's  Recessional,  with  its  individual 
appeal,  its  recoil  from  popular  sentiment,  its  assertion  of 
thought  over  emotion,  is  set  down,  and  rightly,  as  "poetry  of 
a  high  order."  Judging  poetry  by  the  standard  of  modern 
conditions,  which  are  wholly  individual,  artistic,  intellectual, 
the  critic  is  right.  The  war-song  of  to-day,  all  lyrics  of  the 
throng,  have  a  hollow  and  unreal  ring  in  them ;  even  Tenny- 
son's Light  Brigade  somehow  gives  the  effect  of  armour 
which  is  laced  with  bonnet-strings.  The  real  song  of  war 
in  an  age  of  communal  poetry  was  heard  at  that  moment 
which  MiJllenhoff  calls  the  supreme  moment  of  all  Germanic 
life,  when  the  images  of  the  gods  were  brought  out,  when  the 
wedge  was  formed, —  leaders  of  battle  at  the  thin  forward  end 
and  women  and  children  in  the  rear, —  the  whole  community 
at  hand  ;  with  the  hurling  of  Woden's  spear,  all  swept  into 
the  fight,  chanting  the  great  chorus  of  war.  Here  is  the  folk 
communal  in  organization  to  great  extent,  but  not  quite  homo- 
geneous ;  not  a  leaderless  horde,  but  still  holding  to  elements 
of  that  primitive  life ;    here  is    still    poetry    of   the   people. 


SCIENCE   AND   COMMUNAL   POETRY  389 

Communal  elation  still  furnishes  the  main  cause  of  poetic 
utterance ;  the  utterance  is  immediate ;  and  development  of 
the  individual  has  not  yet  sundered  the  making  and  the 
hearing  of  a  song.^ 

^  Perhaps  there  is  some  connection  between  the  fervour  and  merit  of  French 
war-songs  like  the  Marseillaise,  the  fa  ira,  and  the  fact  that  French  literature  as 
a  whole  is  averse  from  undue  stress  upon  the  individual  and  does  not  suffer,  what- 
ever its  other  defects,  from  "too  much  ego  in  its  cosmos."  Texte  points  out  that 
Jean-Jacques,  Germanic  by  nature,  noticed  this  trait  in  the  French.  "LeyV  .  .  , 
est  presque  aussi  scrupuleusement  bannit  de  la  scene  fran^aise  que  des  ecrits  de 
Vox\.-YLoyz\,  ei  les  passions  kumaines  .  .  .  7t'y  parlent  jaijiais  que  par  on.''''  How 
contemptuously  M.  Brunetiere,  who  has  no  superior  in  the  appreciation  of  French 
literature  as  a  whole,  speaks  of  that  new  personal  note,  set  in  fashion  by  Rousseau, 
"  most  eloquent  of  lackeys  !  "  See  "  La  Litterature  Personelle,"  in  B.'s  Questions 
de  Critique,  pp.  211  ff.,  and  his  review  of  Hennequin's  book  in  the  same  collection, 
pp.  305  ff. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE  EARLIEST  DIFFERENTIATIONS  OF  POETRY 

That  primitive  horde  with  its  uncouth  but  rhythmic  dance, 
its  well  timed  but  seemingly  futile  song,  has  now,  let  us 
hope,  found  its  justification  as  the  source  of  poetry.  Not  like 
the  dance  and  song  among  Botocudos  and  Veddahs,  a  thing 
of  degeneration  or  at  least  of  sterile  and  unpromising  kind, 
was  this  beginning  of  the  beginnings  ;  rather  a  feat  of  vast 
moment  for  the  coming  race  of  men,  an  achievement  not  to 
be  measured  by  ordinary  phrase.  In  the  long  reaches  of 
growth  and  differentiation  which  stretch  from  this  beginning 
to  the  present  time,  we  are  now  to  take  our  steps  forward ; 
the  backward  mutters  of  dissevering  power  which  sought  to 
resolve  poetry  unto  its  communal  elements  must  now  yield 
to  a  record  of  its  progress  ;  and  our  first  task  is  to  catch 
sight  of  the  poet,  the  master  of  his  art,  as  he  detaches  him- 
self from  the  throng  and  sets  out  upon  that  path  which  leads 
him  to  his  present  state  of  grace.  Another  and  an  inter- 
esting question  concerns  the  waning  communal  element,  how 
it  loses  its  hold  upon  poetical  production,  and  how  far  it  still 
modifies  the  poet's  work. 

Where  and  how,  then,  does  the  poet  appear  ?  Coopera- 
tion, however  unlike  what  one  now  understands  by  cooper- 
ation, was  the  beginning  of  social  progress,  and  the  discovery 
or  perception  of  rhythm  had  to  play  the  main  part  in  this 
first  communal  act  whether  of  work  or  of  play.  Rhythm 
is  the  expression  of  a  sense  of  coherence ;  and  the  first  co- 
herence was  of  a  kind  to  suppress  the  individual :  all  evi- 
dence goes  to  show  this  fact.     The  Veddahs  live  mainly  in 

3'jo 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      391 

isolated  pairs,  a  brutish  existence,  except  when  some  great 
tribal  interest  brings  them  together ;  at  such  a  time  that 
monotonous,  leaderless  dance  about  the  arrow,  man  clasped 
close  to  man  in  an  almost  solid  ring,  —  the  Botocudos,  too, 
and  many  other  tribes,  are  pictured  as  thus  forming  a  fairly- 
compact  mass,  with  only  a  part  of  the  individual  body  free  to 
move  in  unison  with  the  same  part  of  every  other  body, — is 
the  way  by  which  the  clan  or  horde  finds  itself  in  this  un- 
wonted relation.  Then  the  individual  detaches  himself  from 
his  singing  with  the  throng,  and  for  a  verse  or  so  sings  to  the 
throng ;  but  how  tentative,  how  momentary  his  effort,  and 
how  short  his  range  away  from  the  repeated  communal 
chorus !  For  this  individual  is  not  acting  as  individual, 
acting  freely  in  isolated  life,  but  as  member  of  a  body  which 
is  just  beginning  to  be  a  body  and  to  understand  its  power 
of  social  and  therefore  of  mutual  influence.  Moreover,  as 
Spencer  points  out,  primitive  imagination  is  purely  reminis- 
cent, not  constructive ;  the  earliest  working  of  what  may  pass 
as  poetical  imagination,  then,  is  an  individual  utterance 
reminiscent  of  communal  utterance  and  prolonging  it  with 
shy  and  tentative  variations.  This  is  precisely  what  one 
finds  in  the  song  of  Veddahs  and  Botocudos.  In  the 
Eskimo  singing-house  the  soloist  has  come  to  greater  impor- 
tance ;  he  sings  always  a  song  of  his  own  making,  while  the 
women  join  in  the  chorus  '^  amna  aya,  the  never  failing  end 
of  each  verse."  In  this  singing-house  "almost  every  great 
success  in  hunting  is  celebrated  .  .  .  and  especially  the 
capture  of  a  whale."  When  the  soloist  is  not  singing  these 
adventures,  or  satiric  songs,  also  great  favorites,  the  flyting 
or  song-duel  is  in  order.^  Great,  however,  as  the  indepen 
dence  of  the  singer  seems  compared  with  a  bard  of  the 
Botocudos,  the  chorus  is  still  imperious,  and  no  one  singer 
is  eminent.     Everybody  sings,  —  not  only  in  chorus,  but  in 

1  Boas,  Report  Bur.  Ethnol,  1884-1885,  pp.  564,  600  ff. 


392  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY 

his  turn  as  soloist ;  and  everybody  makes  his  own  song. 
How  utterly  alien  to  this  conception  of  early  social  life  is 
the  monarchical  idea,  the  great  man  idea,  human  history 
begun  by  the  tyrant  of  a  submissive  band !  Take  a  half 
civilized  state  of  society,  as  among  the  Germans  described 
by  Tacitus ;  here  it  is  evident  that  democracy  prevailed  in 
peace,  while  in  war,  with  concessions  to  men  of  "  royal " 
blood,  the  strongest  and  boldest  men  acted  as  chieftains 
gathered  in  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge,  going  into  battle  as 
exemplars  and  leaders,  but  not  as  generals,  not  as  com- 
manding, overseeing  genius  of  a  deliberate  plan.  As  with 
government  and  war,  so  with  property.  Grosse  ^  notes  in 
those  tribes  that  approach  primitive  ways  few  marks  of  indi- 
vidual ownership,  but  a  mass  of  marks  which  denote  claims 
of  the  horde  or  clan.  So,  too,  with  language,  a  problem 
which  nobody  in  these  days  is  fain  to  undertake ;  ^  but 
surely  the  mystic  style  of  Donovan's  article  must  not  hide 
the  soundness  of  his  views,^  already  noted,  on  the  festal 
origin  of  human  speech.  Religion,  however,  may  have 
offered  an  earlier  chance  for  centrifugal  forces.  It  is  prob- 
able that  the  medicine  man,  the  shaman,  with  his  visions, 
his  abnormal  states  and  doings,  closely  connected  with  that 
perilous  stuff  which  every  man  of  the  horde  had  upon  his 
individual  heart  in  ordinary  dreams,  furnished  the  earliest 
example  of  a  commanding  personaHty  acting  in  such  an 
eccentric  way  as  to  make  sharpest  contrast  with  the  co- 
herence of  communal  action.  Here,  said  the  community, 
here  is  a  man  with  a  "gift,"  a  man  apart;  and  his  use  of 
wild  dance  and  song  in  exorcism  may  have  begun  at  a  very 

^  Anf.  d.  Kunst,  p.  132. 

2  On  this  bafiling  theme  there  is  good  reasoning  in  a  neglected  book  by  Noire, 
Die  Welt  ah  Entiuicklung  des  Ceistes,  pp.  240  f.  He  notes  the  mnemonic  force 
of  earliest  words,  which  were  few  and  used  under  strong  emotional  excitement; 
language  was  a  kind  of  "  thinking  aloud." 

2  Stated  in  different  terms  by  W.  von  Humboldt,  Werke,  VI.  198. 


THE   EARLIEST    DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      393 

early  date.  Later,  too,  something  of  the  sacred  and  the 
mysterious  inherent  in  a  shaman's  vocation  may  have  been 
transferred  to  the  poet ;  priest  and  singer  alike  came  to  refer 
their  ecstasy  to  a  divine  source.  Yet  magical  ceremonies, 
whatever  the  advocates  of  prose-poetry  may  say,  offer  no 
good  opportunity  to  observe  the  actual  beginnings  of  the  poet. 
We  can  see  him  detaching  himself,  not  as  magician  or  in 
special  rites,  but  as  a  simple  singer  and  dancer,  from  the 
singing  and  dancing  throng ;  and  this  is  the  proper  point 
of  departure  in  our  study,  for  the  good  reason  that  here  is  a 
fissiparous  birth.  Offspring  of  the  communal  chant  by  the 
simplest  process,  his  own  chant  merely  continues  that  of 
the  community,  which  for  an  instant  or  so  turns  silent  and 
passive  for  his  profit.  Again,  this  first  of  singers  is  no  artist 
in  verse,  favourite  of  the  muses,  no  man  apart,  son  of  the 
golden  clime  and  soUtary  wanderer  over  Parnassus ;  he  is 
every  member  of  the  throng  in  turn.  To  prove  this  \'ital 
point,  we  must  not  only  take  ethnological  evidence,  here  con- 
clusive as  well  as  abundant,  but  must  also  follow  that  method 
which  has  led  to  some  good  results  in  foregoing  pages  of 
this  book  ;  we  must  try  to  connect  the  evidence  of  savage  life 
with  those  survivals  in  an  advanced  stage  of  culture  which  by 
their  mere  survival  indicate  the  persistence  of  a  habit  rooted 
deep  in  human  history  and  human  nature.  We  must  study  by 
this  double  light  a  few  facts  in  regard  to  that  improvisation 
in  which  Aristotle  found  the  beginning  of  poetic  art. 

The  fissiparous  birth  of  individual  from  communal  poetry  is 
confirmed  by  the  process  observed  everywhere  among  savage 
tribes.  Solitary  performance  has  come  there  to  a  consider- 
able pitch  of  skill,  but  it  yields  always  in  importance  to  the 
chorus,  and  along  with  profit  and  reputation  of  a  sort  it  often 
involves  a  kind  of  shame.  Prostitutes  do  the  individual 
singing  and  dancing  in  many  parts  of  the  Orient ;  ^  singing- 

1  Wallaschek,  Prim.  Mus.,  pp.  70  f. 


394  THE   BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

women  and  dance-girls,  even  in  advanced  stages  of  culture, 
pay  dearly  for  their  eminence  ;  and  something  of  this  decline 
in  caste  clings  to  the  most  respectable  solitary  performances, 
now  and  here,  of  the  skilled  "  entertainer."  The  mimes  of 
the  Middle  Ages  were  often  held  to  be  without  the  pale,  not 
only  of  the  law,  but  of  the  church  itself ;  ^  and  while  other 
causes  worked  to  this  end,  something  must  be  conceded  to 
that  attitude  of  every  pubHc  to  its  entertainer  or  even  teacher, 
—  extravagant  praise  and  delight,  extravagant  rewards,  but 
with  it  all  a  sense  of  aloofness,  an  inclination  to  wave  away 
this  centrifugal  element  which  has  set  itself  over  against  the 
communal  body,  now  an  indulgent  contempt,  where  mere 
pastime  is  concerned,  and  now  dislike  and  distrust  at  an 
exhibition  of  independent  thought. 

It  has  been  repeatedly  shown  that  short  improvisations  are 
the  earliest  form  of  individual  poetic  art,  and  are  sung  in  the 
intervals  of  a  chorus,  or  to  relieve  the  monotony  of  labour, 
where  again  they  detach  themselves  from  the  parent  refrain, 
modify  it,  add  to  it,  and  so  build  up  a  song.  There  is  no 
need  to  dwell  on  the  evidence  for  savage  improvisation.  The 
African  is  amazing  in  his  power  to  turn  an  event  into  verse ; 
it  is  a  communal  affair  for  the  most  part,  with  a  chorus  in  the 
background.  At  public  dances  the  Indians  of  America 
improvise,  man  for  man,  indefinitely,  leaning  also  on  the 
monotonous  refrain.  Throughout  the  South-Sea  Islands  ^ 
improvisation  of  songs  is  as  common  as  speech ;  even  the 
children  improvise.  The  lower  the  level  of  culture,  the 
more  general  this  gift  of  improvising ;    "  among  the  Anda- 

^  I.  von  DoUinger,  BeiOdge  zur  Sektengeschichte  des  Mittelalters,  Munich,  1890, 
II.  623  f.,  from  an  old  Ms.,  "  de  hystrionibus  ct  officiis  inutilibus."  Priests  are 
instructed  what  jirofessions  bar  the  granting  of  absolution,  —  an  interesting  pas- 
sage. "  Cum  igitur  meretrices  ad  confcssionem  venerint,  vel  hystriones,  non  est 
eis  danda  pocnitentia,  nisi  ex  toto  talia  relinquant  officia,"  etc. 

"^  See  Dana's  account  of  an  improvising  islander  working  in  California,  Two 
Years  before  the  Mast,  Chap.  XIX. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      395 

mans  every  one  composes  songs."  ^  The  same  holds  of 
Australia,  of  far  Siberia,  and  throughout  the  savage  world ; 
moreover  in  all  these  cases  the  habit  is  not  solitary  but  festal. 
The  oldest  poetry  known  to  tradition  among  the  Afghans 
was  improvised  in  reply  to  an  insulting  verse ;  ^  but  the 
professional  singer  is  on  hand,  and  improvisation  has  become 
an  art.  The  history  of  poetry  among  civilized  races  always 
shows  a  surplus  of  improvisation  in  the  initial  stage  known  to 
the  records ;  so  it  is  with  the  Greek  skolion,  as  well  as  with 
dramatic  beginnings  ;  and  so,  to  take  a  different  case,  with 
the  Arabs,  where  improvisation  long  held  almost  absolute 
sway,^  although  drama  had  no  place  and  a  subjective  spirit 
reaches  back  to  the  earliest  tradition.  Again,  where  a  litera- 
ture is  undeveloped,  although  under  civilized  conditions, 
improvisation  is  the  main  force ;  in  this  case  are  the  Basques.* 
In  fine,  it  is  not  a  vain  tradition  which  puts  a  general  gift  of 
improvising  verse  before  the  development  of  any  national 
literature ;  and  Plutarch,  in  his  treatises  on  Music  and  on 
the  Pythian  Oracle,  speaking  of  a  time  when  all  formal 
utterance  was  in  poetry,  and  when  even  men  without  poetic 
fire  were  wont  to  make  verses  on  any  subject,  is  telling  not  a 
fable  but  something  very  close  to  truth.  The  proof  is 
not  far  to  seek,  and  comes  from  ethnological  as  well  as 
literary  sources. 

^  Wallaschek,  quoting  Portman,  p.  278. 

2  J.  Darmesteter,  Ckafits  Populaires  des  Afghans,  Paris,  1 888-1 890,  p.  clxxxvi. 
The  Afghans  have  got  to  a  Browning  level  in  poetry,  if  we  may  believe  Captain 
Rafferty,  Selections  from  the  Poetry  0/  the  Afghans,  London,  1S62.  "  Shaida's 
poetry  ..."  he  says,  "is  deep  and  difficult." 

^  Ahlwardt,  iiber  Poesie  iind  Poetik  der  Araber,  Gotha,  1856,  p.  7. 

*  F.  Michel,  Le  Pays  Basque,  Paris,  1857,  pp.  214  f.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
Poles.  See  Talvj  (here  spelled  Talvi)  Historical  View  of  the  Languages  and  Lit- 
eratures of  the  Slavic  iValions,  New  York,  1850,  Part  IV.,  pp.  315  ff.  Speaking  of 
the  Polish  ballads,  Mrs.  Robinson  says,  "Their  dances  were  formerly  always 
accompanied  by  singing.  But  these  songs  are  always  extemporized.  Among  the 
country  gentry  .  .  .  the  custom  of  extemporizing  songs  .  .  .  continued  even 
down  to  the  beginning  of  our  own  century." 


396  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Improvisation  in  this  early  and  general  sense,  however, 
must  be  distinguished  from  the  later  sort  which  was  purely 
professional,  an  art  which  Schlegel  ^  calls  "  poetic  rope- 
dancing  "  and  sunders  from  the  older  and  nobler  gift,  from 
"  natural  and  partly  amoebean,  extemporaneous  poetry,  which 
was  and  still  is  a  source  of  social  entertainment."  The  drama, 
he  notes,  began  in  this  way.^  As  a  social  gift,  indeed, 
improvisation  lingers  long  with  civilized  folk ;  a  hundred 
years  ago  the  poet  was  ready  with  his  "  impromptu  on  see- 
ing Miss asleep  in  the  moonlight ;  "  and  ganies  were  com- 
mon enough  where  every  one  had  to  make  verse.  Lady 
Luxborough  ^  wrote  to  Shenstone :  "  It  is  the  fashion  for 
everybody  to  write  a  couplet  to  the  same  tune  —  an  old 
country  dance  —  upon  whatever  subject  occurs  to  them." 
The  couplets,  it  would  seem,  were  satiric ;  and  here,  of 
course,  is  a  late  stage  of  the  flyting.  Then  there  was  the 
clever  man  of  society,  like  Theodore  Hook,^  who  would 
improvise  you  verses  on  anything ;  but  this  phase  of  the  art 
is  best  studied  in  Italy.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  such  verses 
were  generally  sung ;  ^  and,  indeed,  they  come  close  to  the 
professional  improvisation  which  is  to  be  considered  below. 
For  the  present  we  are  to  look  at  the  older  and  more  com- 
munal stage,  where  art  is  just  putting  on  a  show  of  indepen- 
dence and  learning  to  walk  alone. 

The  question  is  not  of  the  fact  of  improvisation  in  primi- 
tive stages  of  culture,  familiar  to  every  student  in  this  field, 
but  of  the  manner  in  which  improvisation  begins,  grows, 
hardens  into  a  profession,  and  dies  out  in  vain  rivalry  with 

^    "  Etwas  iiber  William  Shakspeare,"  IVerke,  VII.  57  f. 

"^  He  refers  to  the  Homeric  hymn  to  Hermes,  vv.  54-56 :  "  The  god  sang  to  the 
playing  what  came  into  his  mind,  quickly,  readily,  just  as  at  festal  banquets  youths 
tease  one  another  with  verses  sung  in  turn." 

^  Quoted  by  Chappell,  II.  623. 

*  See  the  Greville  Memoirs,  III.  122,  202. 

*  Spence,  Anecdotes  (for  Italy),  pp.  116  ff.,  120  note. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      397 

song  of  a  more  deliberate  art.  A  mass  of  improvised  verse 
could  be  quoted  which  differs  from  the  refrain  and  chorus 
of  the  throng  only  in  respect  of  a  trifling  variation  in 
language  and  a  trifling  addition  to  the  matter.  Leaving 
this  fissiparous  offspring,  we  turn  to  that  form  of  improvisa- 
tion which  shows  an  organic  structure  of  its  own,  and  keeps 
the  refrain  at  greater  distance,  discarding,  too,  the  more 
persistent  forms  of  repetition.  Mungo  Park  ^  tells  one  story 
of  his  African  wanderings  which  may  be  assumed  as  a 
faithful  report  of  the  facts ;  for  it  is  to  be  believed,  or  hoped, 
that  Park's  pen,  unlike  the  pen  of  many  travellers  in  general, 
and  the  pen  of  Mr.  Brooke  of  Middlemarch  in  particular, 
was  not  "a  thinking  organ"  apt  to  run  into  adventures  of  its 
own.  The  wanderer,  wet  and  tired,  was  taken  into  the  hut 
of  a  native  woman,  who  gave  him  food  and  a  mat  for  bed, 
going  on  with  the  other  women  to  "spin  cotton"  most  of 
the  night.  "They  lightened  their  labour^  by  songs,  one  of 
which  was  composed  extempoj'e,"  says  Park,  "  for  I  was 
myself  the  subject  of  it.  It  was  sung  by  one  of  the  young 
women,  the  rest  joining  in  a  sort  of  chorus.  .  .  .  The  words, 
literally  translated,  were  these  :  '  The  winds  roared  and  the 
rains  fell ;  the  poor  white  man,  faint  and  weary,  came  and 
sat  under  our  tree,  —  he  has  no  mother  to  bring  him  milk ; 
no  wife  to  grind  his  corn.  Chorus:  Let  us  pity  the  white 
man  ;  no  mother  has  he,'  etc."  Here  the  young  woman 
seems  to  lead  the  chorus  and  suggest  its  words,  while  in  the 
more  primitive  type  of  improvisation  it  is  the  chorus  which 
supplies  the  main  theme,  and  the  tentative,  momentary  singer 
only  adds  his  flourish.  Here,  too,  is  the  element  of  the 
honorarium  ;  for  Park  was  so  affected  that  he  gave  his  land- 
lady "  two  of   the  four  brass  buttons  which  remained "  on 

^  Travels  in  Africa,  reprinted  in  Pinkerton,  XVI.  844. 

*  Improvisation  of  labour  songs  by  women,  solitary  or  in  bands,  is  very  common. 
See  Bucher,  Arbeit  u,  Rhythmus,  passim,  especially,  p.  78,  and  above,  p.  269. 


398  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

his  waistcoat,  and  surely  the  poetess  could  claim  one  of 
them  for  her  poetry.  We  have  all  read  far  worse  at  far 
higher  rates.  True,  the  chorus  or  refrain  is  still  very  potent ; 
the  little  contemporary  event  is  the  sole  suggestion  of  verse 
which  looks  neither  before  nor  after ;  but  the  incremental 
factor  is  less  hampered  and  less  timid,  and  a  touch  of  reflec- 
tion and  sentiment  —  provided  this  was  not  the  product  of 
Park's  reminiscent  mood  —  is  at  hand  in  the  sympathy  for 
a  motherless  man.^  Australians,  too,  though  lower  in  the 
scale  than  Africans,  make  songs  on  the  spur  of  the  moment 
which  "  refer  to  something  that  has  struck  the  attention  at 
the  time,"  and  add  a  bit  of  reflection.  Actually  subjective 
and  reflective  poetry  among  such  people,  now  and  then 
reported  by  missionaries,^  may  be  rejected  with  confidence 
as  either  mistaken  in  the  hearing  or  else  as  echoed  from 
hymns  or  pious  stories  told  to  an  excessively  imitative  folk. 
It  is  still  the  tribe,  clan,  horde,  for  the  party  of  the  first 
part,  and  an  event,  an  emotion,  affecting  this  body  as  a 
whole,  for  the  party  of  the  second  part,  which  gets  into  the 
communal  verse  even  when  sung  by  a  single  deputy.  Indi- 
vidual emotion  as  a  thing  for  itself  is  nowhere  in  the  case. 
Indeed,  if  there  were  time  for  it,  a  raid  upon  philological 
ground  would  show  a  tendency  to  avoid  the  first  and  second 
person  singular  in  all  primitive  speech ;  surely  that  observa- 
tion of  Schleicher^  is  not  antiquated,  along  with  his  other 
theories,  when  he  says  that  the  varying  stems  of  the  per- 
sonal pronoun  point  at  a  deliberate  process  aimed  to  avoid 
expression,  "  as  indeed  often  in  language  one  finds  a  shyness 
to  use  the  /  and  the  thouy     Romanes,^  too,  notes  that  "  in  the 

^  Improvisations  at  dance,  funeral,  wedding,  and  the  like,  among  these  Afri- 
cans, are  summed  up  by  Spencer  in  his  unfinished  Descriptive  Sociology,  pp.  24  f. 

"^  See  above,  p.  20. 

^  Compendium,  4th  ed.,  p.  641.  Cf.  Spencer,  Princ.  Sociol.,  II.  151, 
American  ed. 

*  Mental  Evolution  in  Man,  p.  358,  American  ed. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      399 

earliest  stages  of  articulate  utterance  pronominal  elements, 
and  even  predicative  words,  were  used  in  the  impersonal 
manner  which  belongs  to  a  hitherto  undeveloped  form  of 
self-consciousness."  Perhaps  this  belated  individual  expres- 
sion came  into  poetry  in  the  guise  of  robust  satire,  which  at 
first  clannish  and  collective,  like  the  songs  of  the  maids 
about  Bannockburn,  like  the  mutual  satire  of  rival  villages 
even  now,  like  the  mocking  songs  sung  by  African  girls  at 
a  dance,  passed  into  the  particular  mood  as  a  kind  of  flyting. 
An  excellent  survival  of  this  clan-satire  turned  upon  an 
individual  member  occurs  some  hundred  years  ago.  Pastor 
Lyngbye,^  long  a  resident  among  the  Faroe  islanders,  tells, 
without  the  faintest  desire  to  advance  a  critical  theory, 
precisely  how  a  ballad  was  made  in  a  throng  and  under  cir- 
cumstances which  were  primitive  in  every  respect  save  the 
accident  of  date.  The  whole  community  meets  on  even 
terms  to  spend  a  few  hours  in  sport.  The  expression  of 
communal  feeling  is  first  and  foremost  the  dance ;  and  to  this 
dance,  as  was  once  the  universal  custom,  they  sing  their  own 
songs.  Now  the  song  may  be  one  about  Sigurd  or  other 
hero  of  yore ;  and  in  this  case  one  can  determine,  so  far  as 
possible,  whether  the  "  common  fund  or  patrimony  "  of  race 
tradition  furnishes  the  theme  or  whether  the  story  is  bor- 
rowed from  abroad.  But  the  song  is  not  always  about 
Sigurd ;  and  Lyngbye's  simple  story  of  one  which  is  local, 
spontaneous,  communal,  should  be  taken  to  heart  by  com- 
parative literary  accountants.  Some  fisherman  has  had  a 
misadventure,  whether  by  his  fault  or  his  fate,  and  comes 
to  the  public  dance.  Stalwart  comrades  seize  him,  push 
him  to  the  front,  and  before  the  whole  community  dancing 

^  F(Er<piske  Quceder  om  Sigurd,  etc.,  Randers,  1822.  P.  E.  Miiller  wrote  the 
preface  and  inade  the  extracts  from  Lyngbye's  journal;  so  that  the  evidence  is  at 
first  hand  and  by  an  exact  observer.  The  remoteness  of  the  place  is  equivalent  to 
centuries  in  point  of  time.  See,  too,  V.  U.  Hammershaimb,  Far<psk  Anthologi, 
Copenhagen,  I.  xli  ff. 


400  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

and  swaying  to  a  traditional  rhythm,  stanza  after  stanza  is 
improvised  and  sung,  first  by  a  few,  then  in  hilarious  repeti- 
tion by  the  throng  ;  and  so,  verse  by  verse,  the  story  of  the 
accident  "sings  itself,"  with  the  hero  dancing  willy-nilly  to 
the  tale  of  his  own  doings.  Now,  adds  Lyngbye,  if  this 
ballad  takes  the  fancy  of  the  people,  it  becomes  a  permanent 
thing,  repeated  from  year  to  year.  Here,  indeed,  is  what 
may  well  pass  as  "  objective"  poetry  ;  ^  an  absolute  antithesis 
to  the  subjective  and  reflective  poetry  with  which  modern 
conditions  of  authorship  have  made  us  so  familiar  that  we 
ignore  the  fact  of  any  other  kind. 

Similar  makings  and  traditions  of  the  improvised  song  of 
satire  come  from  the  Highlands ;  witness  the  words  of  J.  F. 
Campbell.^  "  It  was  quite  a  custom  in  the  Highlands,  and 
that  not  long  ago,  to  meet  for  the  purpose  of  composing 
verses.  These  were  often  satirical,  and  any  one  who  hap- 
pened not  to  be  popular  was  fixed  upon  for  a  subject. 
Each  was  to  contribute  his  stanza,  and  whoeyer  failed  to  do 
his  part  was  fined.  Whenever  a  verse  happened  to  be  com- 
posed that  was  pretty  smooth  and  smart,  it  took  well  .  .  . 
and  spread  far  and  wide."  Campbell  notes  the  correspond- 
ing habit  of  Icelanders,  as  told  in  the  Njalssaga.  All 
this  is  still  fissiparous  offspring  of  the  festal  dance  and 
song;  but  just  as  all  mankind  now  loves  a  lover,  so  in  more 
robust  days  it  may  be  assumed  that  all  mankind  most  loved 
a  fight ;  and  the  fight  in  alternate  stanzas  of  a  song-duel 
concentrated  attention  on  the  fighting  pair,  spurred  them  to 
independent  effort,  and  brought  about  an  organic,  individual 
song.  This  flyting  is  a  venerable  affair;  and  every  one 
knows  the  dual  combats  in  verse  so  common  among  the 
Eskimo,  a  pretty  makeweight  to  amoebean  verse  under  the 
Sicilian   skies.     In   Iceland   not  only   were    sarcastic  verses 

^  See  the  author's  Old  English  Ballads,  p.  xxxiv. 

2  Popular  Tales  of  the  West  Highlands,  2d  ecL,  IV.  164  f. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      401 

made  upon  one  another  by  professed  poets  like  Gunnlaiig 
Snake-Tongue,  but  at  the  dance  vtaiistingvar,  that  is,  satiric 
stanzas  exchanged  by  men  and  women,  were  in  vogue  for 
every  one,  and  in  their  Fescennine  Ucense  often  called  out 
futile  protest  from  the  church. ^  Civilized  Europe  itself  is 
covered  from  end  to  end  by  traces  of  a  custom  once,  it 
would  seem,  universal  among  folk  of  low  and  high  degree ; 
and  it  is  beyond  doubt,  save  with  theorists  who  decline 
to  look  at  the  evidence  of  comparative  literature,  that  amoe- 
bean  verse  of  the  classic  kind,  rude  dramatic  beginnings, 
survivals  like  the  stravibotto  and  stornello  of  Italy,  the  coplas'^ 
of  Spain,  the  stev  of  Norway,  the  gaytas  of  Galicia,  the 
schnaderhupfl  of  Germany,  all  go  along  with  these  rough 
flytings  of  half-civilized  and  of  wholly  barbarous  races  as 
offshoots  of  communal  song  where  the  individual  singer 
detaches  himself  from  the  chorus  and  sings  stanzas  which 
mainly  incline  to  rivalry  with  another  singer.  Moreover, 
this  was  once  a  universal  gift.  Wherever  communal  con- 
ditions survive,  there  survive  also  traces  of  a  time  when  one 
could  talk  of  a  "  folk  in  verse  "  as  well  as  of  a  folk  in  arms. 
Improvisation  is  a  fairly  easy  process  with  Esthonians, 
Lithuanians,  Finns,  where  classic  tradition  is  out  of  the 
question,  just  as  it  is  an  easy  process  with  the  peasant  of 
Italy.  The  substitution  of  love  for  hate  or  satire,  of  frank 
erotic  stanzas  of  the  times  when  the  way  of  a  man  with  a 
maid  was  matter  of  communal  interest,  is  easy  to  understand, 
if  hard  to  date  and  place ;  even  now,  rustic  love-making  at 
picnics  is  conspicuous  for  epithets  that  might  easily  be 
understood  as  belonging  to  a  quarrel.     The  publicity  of  these 

^  Described  at  length  by  Mobius  in  the  "  Erganzungsband "  for  Zacher's 
Zeitschrift  f,  d.  deutsche  Philologie,  1874,  p.  54.  For  the  debat,  tenso,  sirventes, 
jeu-parti,  conjlictos,  and  all  the  rest  on  romance  ground,  see  Jeanroy,  pp.  48  f., 
and  Greif,  Zst.  f.  vgl.  Lit.,  N.  F.,  I.  289. 

2  For  Portugal,  see  Dr.  C.  F.  Bellermann,  Portug.  Volkslieder  u.  Romanzen, 
Leipzig,  1874,  p.  viii. 


402  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

amatorious  stanzas  still  survives  in  games  and  country  revel. 
A  game  now  played  among  the  young  people  of  Swedish 
Finland,  "  Simon  i  Salle,"  was  described  by  a  native  to  the 
present  writer ;  in  a  dancing  ring  of  both  sexes,  with 
chorus  and  refrain,  a  youth  steps  up  to  a  girl  and  says  he 
has  something  to  give  her.  What  has  he,  is  the  more  or 
less  defiant  question ;  and  he  must  improvise  his  stanza 
descriptive  of  the  gift,  while  all  the  other  young  men  con- 
tinue dancing  forward  and  backward  as  he  sings,  the  girls 
standing.  When  a  girl  has  to  improvise,  the  other  girls 
dance  and  the  young  men  stand  still.^  This  universal  impro- 
vising power  must  be  put  in  the  clearest  possible  light,  in 
order  to  show  that  the  formula  of  exceptional  bucolic  wit, 
rustic  bard,  simple  but  noted  singer  of  the  countryside,  as 
offset  to  the  poHshed  singer  of  a  better  time  and  place, 
is  utterly  inadequate  to  explain  the  beginnings,  growth,  and 
decline  of  what  is  called  popular  poetry.  Communal  labour, 
of  course,  echoes  in  these  improvisations  as  well  as  communal 
satire  and  love.  Until  recent  days,  people  in  the  Scottish 
Highlands  gathered  at  a  farmer's  door  on  the  first  night  of 
the  year,  singing  a  few  lines  in  Gaelic,  while  one  of  their 
number  dragged  a  cowhide  and  the  rest  beat  time  with 
sticks  ;  in  this  fashion  they  marched  three  times  round  the 
house.  Then  all  "halt  at  the  door,  and  each  person  utters  an 
extempore  rhyme,  extolling  the  hospitality  of  the  landlord."  ^ 
Workmen  in  Dunkirk^  still  improvise  verses  to  a  favourite 
tune,  singing  the  chorus  with  great  energy :  — 

Ali,  alo,  pour  Maschero  ! 
Ali,  ali,  alo,  — 

and  in  solo,  improvised  then  and  there,  a  line  such  as,  — 
II  boit  le  vin  et  nous  donn'  de  Teau,  — 

^  On  ease  of  improvisation  among  the  P'inns  proper,  see  Comparetti,  Kalewala, 
p.  17. 

^  Chambers,  Popular  Rhymes  of  Scotland,  pp.  166  f.  ^  Coussemaker,  p.  271. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      403 

with  another  choral  "  ali,  ali,  alo."  In  fact,  when  one  comes 
to  a  certain  class  of  peasant  life,  improvisation  is  as  universal 
a  "  gift "  as  it  is  among  the  savages,  and  as  it  was  by  general 
consent  of  ethnologists  ^  among  all  primitive  folk.  For  a 
glimpse  at  the  past,  Caedmon  is  evidently  a  case  of  improvi- 
sation —  it  was  expected  of  the  merest  hind,  one  sees  —  lifted 
to  literary  performance.  When  Anglo-Saxon  laws^  say  a 
priest  must  not  get  drunk  and  "turn  gleeman  or  ale-bard," 
they  mean  that  he  is  not  to  improvise  convivial  songs,  and 
they  have  no  reference  to  the  professional  minstrel ;  he  is  to 
resist  a  common  temptation  and  refuse  a  traditional  duty  of 
every  reveller,  much  like  the  duty  of  the  Greek  to  make  and 
sing  his  skolion  at  the  banquet.  So,  again,  it  is  inversion 
and  perversion  of  the  plain  facts  when  one  thinks  of  Welsh 
pennillio7i  as  scattered  brands  from  the  old  Eistedfodd  fire  ; 
it  is  the  growth  of  a  professional  class  of  bards  out  of  the 
general  turn  for  improvising  which  is  to  explain  the  Eisted- 
fodd, and  it  is  the  survival  of  old  and  universal  habit  when 
Welshmen  even  now  sing  one  peujiill  after  another  in  rapid 
alternation.  Professor  Schuchardt^  heard  such  a  friendly 
contest  not  long  ago,  and  was  struck  by  the  close  resemblance 
of   these   quatrains   to   the    German    schnaderhiipfl  and   the 

1  Wallace  is  thinking  of  music  and  song  in  the  nobler  sense  when  he  denies 
them  to  primitive  races;  and  Wallaschek's  answer  is  conclusive,  for  it  is  based  on 
evidence  that  all  goes  one  way,  Primitive  Music,  pp.  277  f.  Another  absurd 
reaction  against  romantic  ideas  is  to  deny  lyric  propensity  to  primitive  folk  and 
substitute  an  acute  sense  of  "business."  So  Norden,  work  quoted,  I.  156,  says 
the  prayer  of  early  man  was  anything  but  a  "  lyrical  outpouring  ";  it  was  "a  con- 
tract with  deity,  give  and  take."  But  emotional  fear  and  emotional  thanks  pre- 
cede any  such  shrewd  rationalism  as  this,  if  psychology  is  to  be  regarded,  let  alone 
ethnological  evidence. 

2  Schmid,  2d  ed.,  p.  366. 

^  Romanisches  und  Keltisches,  pp.  363  f.  The  four-line  stanza,  he  says,  is  easy 
to  compose,  and  one /f««27/ suggests  another;  so  that  each  is  half  tradition,  half 
improvisation,  belonging  "  to  everybody  and  nobody."  This  description  approaches 
very  closely  the  hypothetical  description  given  by  Ten  Brink  in  his  sketch  of  Old 
English  poetry  for  Paul's  Grundriss,  of  the  making  of  ballads  in  a  more  primitive 
day. 


404  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

improvised  stanzas  of  Italy.  Improvisation  is  the  first  step 
and  not  the  last  step  in  art ;  theories  that  the  ballad  is  a  be- 
lated bit  of  art  taken  up  by  countryfolk  after  the  lords  of 
letters  have  flung  it  aside/  that  songs  of  the  people  echo  old 
opera  tunes  and  concert  ditties,  and  all  easy  little  dicta  of  the 
sort,  are  confuted  by  a  study  of  comparative  literature  both 
in  the  genetic  and  in  the  sociological  phases  of  it.  Peasants 
who  make  verse-combats  their  source  of  entertainment  might 
be  regarded  as  imitating  a  troubadour  debat,  if  one  did  not  con- 
sider how  universal  and  primitive  a  custom  this  is  known  to 
be.  Eskimo  song-duels  are  not  borrowed  from  the  trouba- 
dours. Italian  peasants  might  be  said  to  derive  their  stram- 
botti  from  amoebean  verse  like  that  of  Vergil,  were  it  not  for 
the  fact  that  Roman  peasants  loved  and  practised  this  sort  of 
thing  from  the  beginning.  As  Horace  says,  speaking  of  the 
old  breed  of  Roman,^  — 

Fescennina  per  hunc  inventa  licentia  morem 
versibus  alternis  opprobria  rustica  fudit, 
libertasque  recurrentes  accepta  per  annos 
lusit  amabiliter  .   .  . 

a  festal  and  communal  affair.  This  rustic  communal  inter- 
change of  satire  in  improvised  verses  works  up  to  the  level  of 
art  not  at  first  by  aid  of  the  poets,  but  by  singers  of  note, 
men  who  began  to  take  a  pride  in  their  special  gift  of  improvi- 
sation, as  will  be  shown  in  the  following  pages.  Mean- 
while a  specimen  of  the  verse-contest  under  partly  communal 
conditions  can  be  found  in  an  Irish  carmen  amoebaeum,  as  Mr. 
Hyde  calls  it,  improvised  alternately  by  a  guest  and  his  host- 
ess. The  latter  has  the  hard  end  to  carry,  as  she  must  finish 
the  quatrain   which  the  man  begins ;    and  no  wonder  she 

1  Mr.  Gregory  Smith's  facile  explanation,  The  Transition  Period,  pp.  182  f. 

2  Ep.  II.  i.  145  f.     See  Zell,  Ferienschriften,  II.  122  ff.     Soldiers  sang  in  pairs, 
or  in  two  sections,  these  alternate  mockint;  verses. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      405 

yields,  especially  as  the  Blarney  Stone  has  evidently  lent  aid 
to  her  gallant  visitor.^  It  is  clear,  then,  that  idyll  and  eclogue 
in  degeneration  are  not  to  explain  the  verse-combats  whether 
of  savages  or  even  of  peasants ;  the  Roman  and  Oscan  farm- 
ers improvised  such  songs  in  their  satura  and  in  their  rough 
comedies,  innocent  of  all  literary  influences ;  and  the  Italian 
peasant  of  to-day  keeps  up  this  custom  wherever  schoolmas- 
ters and  other  plagues  of  civilization  bide  afar  off  and  leave 
him  to  his  own  communal  devices.  What  Theocritus  ^  and 
Vergil  did  was  to  use  these  rude  improvisations  as  suggestion 
or  even  foundation  for  their  art.^  For  rustic  survivals  these 
strambotti  and  the  coplas  of  Spain,  with  other  quatrains  of 
the  sort,  made  in  and  for  the  dance  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  southern  Europe,*  are  less  useful  for  purposes 
of  study  in  primitive  song  than  the  schnadeThupfl  and  the 
stev,  one  German,  the  other  Scandinavian,  of  northern  lands. 
As  to  the  former,  J.  A.  Schmeller's  brief  account,^  made 
sixty  years  ago,  is  still  authoritative,  though  much  has  been 
written  about  these  quatrains  since ;  most  readable  as  well  as 
most  learned  is  the  essay  of  Gustav  Meyer.^     Collections  and 

1  Douglas  Hyde,  Love  Songs  of  Connacht,  1895,  PP-  ^^  ^'  The  prose  transla- 
tion has  less  artificial  suggestion  than  the  translation  in  verses. 

^  Athenaeus  and  Diodorus  are  quoted  as  authorities  for  the  Sicilian  origin  of 
such  combats  in  verse;  but  Jeanroy  disposes  of  this  theory  by  an  effective  use  of 
the  argument  from  comparative  literature.     See  his  Origines,  pp.  260  ff. 

3  On  the  meaning  and  relations  of  stranibotto,  stornello,  rispetlo,  ritornello,  and 
the  other  terms,  see  Count  Nigra's  Canti  Popolari  del  Piemonte,  Torino,  iSSS, 
pp.  xi  ff.  He  corrects  Schuchardt's  use  of  ritornell  for  stornello.  This  latter  is 
really  an  amoebean  form  of  verse,  has  but  one  stanza,  and  this  of  three  lines;  the 
strambotto  is  one  stanza,  too,  but  has  four,  six,  ten,  or  even  more  lines.  Still,  the 
four-line  stanza,  as  comparison  shows,  is  clearly  the  primitive  form.  Southern 
Italy  is,  of  course,  far  richer  in  these  songs  than  Piedmont,  the  home  of  lyrical 
narrative  or  ballad. 

■*  Found,  too,  m  India;  but  here  not  in  the  really  communal  stage.  See  Gustav 
Meyer,  Essays  unci  Studien,  pp.  293  f. 

^  Bayerisches  Worterbuch,  III.  499,  explaining  them  as  Scknilterkiipjlein,  songs 
of  the  reapers. 

^  With  references  to  the  literature  of  these  songs,  work  quoted,  pp.  332  ff. 


406  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

discussions^  are  plentiful;  and  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  name 
of  this  sort  of  verse  is  not  constant,  being  now  disguised  as 
"  songlet,"  "  dancer,"  and  the  like,  and  now  as  rimdd?  Schmel- 
ler  defines  the  schiaderhiipfl  as  "  a  short  song  consisting  of  one 
or  two  riming  couplets,  but  in  any  case  of  four  lines,  which  is 
sung  to  certain  local  and  traditional  dance-tunes,  and  is  often 
improvised  on  the  spot  by  the  singer  or  dancer."  Singer  a7id 
dancer,  of  course,  is  the  primitive  form,  and  this  as  hendia- 
dys :  "  the  singing  dancer."  A  typical  quatrain  of  the  sort, 
so  far  as  this  consideration  goes,  comes  from  Vogtland  :  — 

I  and  my  Hans, 
We  go  to  the  dance  ; 
And  if  no  one  will  dance, 
Dance  I  and  my  Hans. 

Hinterhuber^  describes  the  modern  process  ;  the  waltz  goes 
on  awhile,  then  in  a  pause  the  throng  sings  a  few  stanzas, 
then  the  dance  is  resumed  and  youth  after  youth  improvises, 
without  ceasing,  to  a  traditional  tune.  "  They  never  sing 
the  verses  of  local  and  popular  poets,  but  all  is  original^ 
What  is  of  particular  interest  in  this  process  is  the  com- 
munal scene  and  occasion,  mainly  a  village  dance,  the  tradi- 
tional tune,  the  frequent  chorus,  and,  against  this  background, 
the  individual  performance  of  the  singer.  We  seem  to  find 
here  the  point  of  departure  for  artistic  poetry ;  for  in  the 
actual  quatrain  one  seldom  meets  repetition,  that  inevitable 
note  of  the  refrain  and  of  the  fissiparous  single  song  which 

1  On  the  form  cf.  O.  Brenner,  "  Zum  Versbau  der  Schnaderhupfl,"  in  Fest- 
schrift zur  £o  j'dhr.  Doktorjubelfeier  Karl  Weinholds,  Strassburg,  1896,  who 
gives  fresh  references  for  the  various  subjects  of  discussion.  He  emphasizes  the 
fact  that  these  schnaderhupfl  are  always  sung. 

'■^  Dr.  II.  Danger,  Rjindds  und  Reimspri'uhe  aus  dem  Vogtlande,  Plauen,  1876. 
A  runda  is  originally  "a  little  song  sung  while  drinking,"  but  is  made  to  include 
the  schnaderhilpfl ;  and  in  the  author's  opinion  all  these  forms  go  back  to  songs  of 
reapers  during  harvest.     That,  however,  is  of  no  great  moment  here. 

"  "  Ueber  Poesie  der  Alpenliinder,"  in  a  reprint  from  a  magazine  whose  title 
does  not  appear. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      407 

detaches  itself,  as  among  savages,  from  the  refrain  ;  and  while 
the  reapers '  song  may  be  behind  all  this  rude  lyric  of  the 
hills,  it  is  no  festal  recapitulation  of  communal  labour,  no 
echo  of  work  or  village  triumph,  that  one  hears,  but  rather 
the  personal  sentiment,  either  erotic  or  defiant,  of  the  indi- 
vidual singer.  Moreover  it  is  always  from  one  person  and 
mainly  to  one  person.  Nevertheless,  it  must  have  dance, 
throng,  communal  conditions  through  and  through,  or  it  is 
not  the  scJmaderJiiipfl.  So  interesting  a  case  as  this  excuses 
some  breadth  and  detail  in  the  treatment  of  it. 

The  home  of  the  scJinaderhiipfl  is  centred  in  the  Bavarian 
Alps,  spreading  thence  in  many  directions  and  to  some  remote 
districts,  which  may  all  be  found  described  in  the  careful  sum- 
mary of  Gustav  Meyer ;  the  concern  now  is  not  with  the 
vogue  but  with  the  thing  itself.  It  is  slowly  degenerating 
and  even  disappearing,  in  spite  of  its  tenacity,  its  vigour,  and 
the  love  for  it  felt  by  the  peasants  of  those  conservative 
regions.  As  with  the  rural  refrain,  so  here,  lewd  fellows  of 
the  baser  sort  lay  hold  upon  it  as  the  communal  and  universal 
character  of  it  lapses  ;  near  Weimar  one  may  still  hear  peasants 
singing  these  quatrains  in  a  kind  of  emulation,  but  the  frankly 
erotic  has  become  licentiously  rotten.  Here  and  there,  how- 
ever, it  lives  in  its  old  estate,  but  by  a  very  feeble  tenure ; 
singing  societies,  friends  from  the  city,  concert  tunes,  what 
not,  are  hounding  it  from  its  last  retreats.  The  quatrains  now 
gathered  are  mainly  traditional,  not  freshly  improvised  like 
those  of  earlier  days,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  how  many 
variants  can  be  found  of  one  theme.  Direct  borrowing 
occurs,  of  course ;  but  a  more  frequent  process  is  the  use  of 
a  popular  initial  line  which  is  continued  in  varying  fashion 
into  a  corresponding  variety  of  verses.  Something  like  this, 
but  not  really  the  same  thing,  is  or  was  common  in  cheap 
theatrical  exhibitions,  where  some  catching  but  meaningless 
refrain  introduces  a  series    of  local  "  hits."     The  schnadeV' 


408  THE   BEGINNINGS  OF  POETRY 

hiipjl,  however,  has  a  far  more  dignified  way,  reflecting  a 
nobler  mood  whether  of  joy  or  of  grief.  Thus  a  pair  of  quat- 
rains, perhaps  amoebean  in  origin,  from  near  Salzburg  :  *  — 

When  it's  cold  in  the  winter, 

And  snow-tempests  whirl, 
How  cozy  and  warm 

In  the  room  of  my  girl ! 

When  it's  cold  in  the  winter. 

Go  warm  you  a  while ; 
And  the  love  that  is  old 

Cannot  easily  spoil. 

Close  to  the  amoebean,  and  with  two  lines  essentially  the 
same,  are  these,^  in  mild  satire  :  — 

No  mountain  so  high  ' 

But  the  chamois  can  pass, 
And  no  youngster  on  earth 

Can  be  true  to  his  lass. 

No  mountain  so  high 

But  the  chamois  climbs  over, 
And  no  girl  is  so  fair 

But  she'll  take  to  a  lover. 

This  is  improvisation  on  crutches.  Often,  however,  the 
standing  line  has  variations  ;  for  example :  ■*  — 

^  Firmenich,  Germaniens  Volkerstimmen,  II.  716.  I  have  made  these  trans- 
lations solely  to  reproduce,  if  possible,  the  spirit  of  the  original,  and  have  tried  to 
keep  the  false  "  literary  "  note  at  arm's  length, 

-  Ibid.,  II.  715,  777. 

2  G.  Meyer,  p.  357,  prints  a  nunil)er  of  such  variations  on  the  standing  first 

verse :  — 

It  is  dark  in  the  woods 

Because  of  the  crows,  — 
That  my  girl  will  be  false, 

That  every  one  knows. 

It  is  dark  in  the  woods 
Because  of  the  firs, — 
and  so  on. 

*  Firmenich,  II.  779. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      409 

No  sea  without  water, 

No  wood  without  tree, 
And  no  night  when  I  sleep 

Without  dreaming  of  thee. 

No  night  without  star, 

And  no  day  without  sun, 
And  no  heart  in  the  world 

But  beats  for  some  one. 

But  we  are  nearing  the  "  keepsake  "  and  "  annual "  tone ; 
it  is  well  to  hold  the  dance  in  plain  sight  and  hearing,  where 
one  gets  either  the  mood  of  Eros  :  ^  — 

0  sweetheart,  be  wiser, 
And  dance  with  no  tailor, — 
Dance  only  with  me, 

And  my  love  is  for  thee  !  — 

or  the  mood  of  Anteros :  — 

1  thought  you  were  pretty ; 

It's  false,  I  declare  ; 
You're  goitred  and  crooked, 
A  girl  with  red  hair, — 

one  specimen  out  of  many,  but  quite  sufficient,  for  that  lyrical 
exchange  of  compliments  at  the  dance  which  has  satisfied  the 
sense  of  humour  in  rustic  and  even  savage  communities  every- 
where ;  a  nearer  echo,  even,  of  the  dance,  in  the  spirit  of  the 
Miller  of  the  Dee,  is  in  this  quatrain  :  — 

I've  a  cow  and  a  calf 

And  a  donkey,  all  three  ; 
And  what  do  I  care 

Who  the  leader  -  may  be  ? 

So  the  dancing  youth,  at  Innsbriick,  flinging  his  money  to  the 
musicians  for  a  good  turn,  likes  to  proclaim  to  the  throng  his 
own  self,  not  forgetting  his  guild  :  — 

1  Firmenich.  II.  661.  ^  Qf  the  dance,  —  the  vorsinger. 


410  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

What  needs  has  a  hunter? 

A  hunter  has  none, 
Save  a  girl  with  black  eyes, 

And  a  dog,  and  a  gun.^ 

Or  a  girl  proclaims  her  lover's  prowess  :^  — 

My  lover's  a  rider, 

A  rider  is  he  ; 
His  horse  is  the  kaiser's. 

The  rider's  for  me. 

So,  too,  the  rude  compliment :  — 

You  girl  with  the  black  eyes 

And  chestnut-brown  hair, 
When  you  look  at  me  so, 

I  turn  fool,  I  declare. 

Easy  and   silly,  one  says.     Precisely.     Easy  because  made 

by  everybody  and  still  close  to  the  repeated  refrain  of  the 

throng,  and  silly  in  the  old  meaning  of   simple  and   plain. 

All  the  great  lyric  poets  know  that   they  must   be  silly  in 

this  sense,  or  they  are  mere  ink  and  paper,  divorced  from 

life  and  the  lilt  of  communal  song ;  Goethe,  Burns,  Heine, 

will  tell  that  tale  plainly  enough,  and  let  one  compare  Matthew 

Arnold's  Geisfs  Grave,  not  to  speak  of  Wordsworth's  and 

Landor's  triumphs,  with   the  genuine  pathos  but   irritating 

intricacy  of  T.  E.  Brown's  Aber  Statiofts.     Perhaps  this  bit 

from  Salzburg^  shows   the  improvisation,  still  simple  to  a 

fault,  working  up  to  the  note  which  one  demanded  for  real 

poetry :  — 

My  heart  is  a  clock, 

And  it  stops  now  and  then ; 
But  a  kiss  from  my  lassie 

Can  start  it  again  ! 

1  Variants  of  this  are  found  in  many  places. 

*  Firmenich,  III.  39.  ^  Jbid,^  n.  716. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      411 

Or  with  a  little  pressure  on  the  form,  with  hint  of  art,  this 
from  Steiermark  :  ^  — 

You  are  fair,  you  are  dear, 

But  you  are  not  my  own ; 
You'd  be  fairer  yet,  dearer  yet. 

Were  you  my  own! 

Familiar  as  a  source  of  quatrains  is  the  youth  pleading  or 
querulous  outside  of  the  fair  one's  window,  and  the  maid 
doubtful  or  scornful  within;  there  are  a  few  English  frag- 
ments of  this  sort  which  are  printed  in  Chappell,^  and  some 
are  still  heard  in  the  rural  parts.     The  Salzburg  youth  pleads 

thus : ^  — 

Ah,  love,  lift  the  latch,  — 

Here  the  wind  is  so  bleak; 
With  thee  in  the  house  there 
How  cozy  and  sweet ! 

From  this,  with  hundreds  of  the  sort,  runs  a  lyrical  path,  if 
one  could  but  trace  it,  to  the  elaborate  ode  of  Horace,*  imi- 
tated,  of  course,  from  the  Greek,  and  its  type  long  become 
the  conventional  treatment  of  an  unconventional  situation, 
but  no  doubt  at  the  start  expanded  from  shorter  and  more 
vivid  songs  of  "the  excluded  lover,"  of  which  one  finds  a 
scrap  in  the  other  and  more  famous  ode  on  the  courtesan's 

old  age  :  — 

Audis  minus  et  minus  iam 
"  Me  tuo  longas  pereunte  nocteSy 
Lydia,  dormis  ?  "  ^ 

One  has  heard  the  Salzburg  youth ;  and  the  Salzburg  maid  is 
explicit  in  her  reply  :  ^  — 

1  Ibid.,  II.  737. 

2  "  Go  from  my  window,"  pp.  140  ff.,  with  variations  (as  "  Come  up  to  my 
window  ")  and  parodies. 

3  Firmenich,  II.  715.  *  Od.,  III.  X. 

5  It  is  well  to  note  here  that  development  is  one  thing  and  imitation  is  another. 
The  authorities  agree  that  a  schnaderhiipfl  cannot  be  imitated.  See  Gustav 
Meyer,  p.  351.  6  Firmenich,  II.  717. 


412  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Go  away  from  my  window, 

And  leave  me  alone ; 
The  door  Til  not  open 

However  you  moan, 

a  striking  contrast  to  the  complacency  of  a  schnaderhiipfl, 
said  to  be  one  of  the  oldest  recorded,  taken  down  by  Tobler 
at  Appenzell,  in  1754:  — 

Mine,  mine,  mine,  O  my  love  is  fine, 

And  to-night  he  shall  come  to  me ; 
Till  the  clock  strikes  eight,  till  the  clock  strikes  nine, 

My  door  shall  open  be. 

But  one  must  stay  by  the  dancing  throng,  the  rivalry  of  the 
singers,  the  question  and  answer,  a  succession  of  stanzas  thus 
tending  to  group  about  a  theme  given  by  the  occasion  and 
kept  in  mind  by  a  constant  suggestion  of  rime  and  repeated 
or  slightly  varied  verses ;  from  all  this  it  is  highly  probable 
that  one  will  learn  something  of  the  communal  origins  of 
lyric  poetry.  Thus  there  is  nothing  immediate  or  suggestive 
of  the  dance  in  a  detached  quatrain  with  question  and  answer 
like  this:^  — 

Why  crymg,  my  pretty, 

By  the  tree  there  alone  ? 
Why  should  I  not  cry 

When  my  sweetheart  is  gone  ? 

But  the  dance  and  the  throng  are  not  far  away  from  saucy 
bits  of  another  type  :^ — 

Black-eyed  and  bright  one, 
Were  I  not  the  right  one 
For  you  of  them  all  .  .  . 
If  I  loved  you  at  all  ? 
Or  this:  — 

You  lass  with  the  black  eye, 

Now  leave  me  alone  ; 
I'm  not  your  Darby, 
And  you're  not  my  Joan. 

1  Firmenich,  III.  396. 

*  Ibid.,  II.  280.     This  is  widespread.     See  Meyer,  p.  356. 


THE    EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      413 

Similarly  there  comes  from  Carinthia  a  challenge  of  youth 
to  youth,  with  audible  lilt  of  the  dance,  too  often  prelude  to  a 
grim  struggle  not  in  Touchstone's  version  of  the  code,  but 
based  on  Touchstone's  theory  of  "  mine  own  "  :  — 

You  will  not,  you  will  not  my  lassie  be  loving, 

You  will  not,  you  will  not  a  simpleton  be ; 
You'll  have  to,  you'll  have  to  go  find  you  another, 

You  know  well,  you  know  well  my  lass  is  for  me  ! 

What  now  is  to  prevent  these  quatrains,  whether  in  ques- 
tion and  answer,  or  in  a  succession  of  related  and  varied 
harpings  on  one  theme,  to  form  a  little  poem,  a  lyric  ? 
Professor  Brandl  says  it  does  not  so  happen,  as  if  solitude 
and  paper  and  emotion  at  second  hand  always  had  to  be  in 
the  case ;  facts,  however,  say  that  the  process  is  not  only 
probable  in  theory  but  definitely  before  one  on  the  record. 
To  begin  with,  a  quatrain  of  undoubted  communal  origin,  a 
genuine  schnaderhiipfl,  often  finds  its  way  into  a  folksong  ; 
so  with  this  from  Alsace  :  ^  — 

'Tis  not  so  long  ago  it  rained. 

The  trees  are  dripping  yet ; 
And  I  had,  I  had  a  lover  once, 

I  would  I  had  him  yet. 

There  is  a  pretty  little  English  ballad  called  The  Unquiet 
Grave?  which  begins  in  the  same  tone  :  — 

The  wind  doth  blow  to-day,  my  love, 

And  a  few  small  drops  of  rain  ; 
I  never  had  but  one  true-love, 

In  cold  grave  she  was  lain.  .   .  . 

and  the  ballad  goes  on  with  a  dialogue  between  the  lover 
and  his  dead  sweetheart.^       On    the  other  hand,  amoebean 

^  Meyer,  p.  341.  The  rimes  are  identical  in  the  original.  Meyer  gives  seven 
versions. 

2  Child,  III.  236. 

'  On  this  opening  touch  from  nature  in  the  ballads,  exemplified  in  English  by 
the  beautiful  beginning  of  Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk,  much  has  been  written ; 


414  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

forms  of  the  schnaderhiipfl  could  easily  lead  to  such  alternate 
stanzas  as  one  finds  in  the  pretty  ballad,  common  in  France, 
to  which  Child  supplies  "a  base-born"  English  cousin.  The 
Twa  Magicians}  with  a  catching  refrain  suggestive  of  the 
dance.  So  plain  is  the  connection  between  these  schnader- 
hiipfl, the  stev  of  Norway,  all  similar  isolated  quatrains, 
and  the  actual  songs  of  situation,  question,  and  answer,  that 
Landstad  declared  for  the  quatrains  as  debris  of  longer 
poems.  But  Gustav  Meyer  ^  is  surely  right  in  his  energetic 
rejection  of  this  way  of  looking  at  the  process ;  his  proof 
seems  convincing  to  a  degree.  Nobody  will  say  that  the 
artistic  lyric  as  we  have  it,  or  even  the  later  communal  ballad, 
is  made  by  direct  union  of  scattered  stanzas ;  but  it  seems 
clear  enough  that  these  isolated  quatrains  furnish  the  mate- 
rial for  such  poems,  and  that  part  of  the  process  could  be 
achieved  in  the  grouping  of  quatrains  improvised  about  a  com- 
mon subject  and  on  a  communal  occasion.  Those  repeated 
questions  why  the  forsaken  lass  is  crying,  still  echo  in  a  lyric 
like  Scott's  Jock  of  Hazeldean :  — 

Why  weep  ye  by  the  tide,  lady, 
Why  weep  ye  by  the  tide  ? 

and  it  is  demonstrable  that  improvised  quatrains  give  a 
situation,  and  so  group  themselves  into  a  little  poem ; 
Meyer  ^  quotes  such  a  song  of  two  stanzas  which  has  been 
made  in  this  way,  and  yet  could  be  easily  foisted  upon 
Eichendorff  or  some  poet  of  the  sort :  — 

My  lover  has  come, 

And  what  did  he  bring  ? 
For  the  evening  a  kiss, 

For  my  finger  a  ring. 

but  this  use  of  the  same  device  in  a  schnaderhupjl  is  very  significant,  and  has 
aroused  little  comment.     See  Meyer,  pp.  377  ff. 

1  Child,  I.  399  ff.  a  Eisays,  pp.  365  ^.  »  On  p.  358. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      415 

The  ring  it  is  broken, 

The  love  is  all  gone, 
And  out  of  the  window 

The  kisses  have  flown. ^ 

A  little  more  circumstance,  a  touch  of  nature,  a  touch  or 
two  of  art,  and  out  of  the  question  and  answer  in  impro- 
vised quatrains  comes  a  ballad,  with  the  help  of  that 
neglected  but  so  unjustly  neglected  refrain,  for  which  notice 
has  been  demanded  already  as  for  an  important  communal 
element  in  poetry.  So  one  might  guess  the  origins  of  the 
pretty  ballad  of  the  sickle :  ^  given  a  traditional  refrain  of 
the  reapers,  and  a  couple  of  schnaderhiipfl  improvised  in 
the  familiar  strain  of  question  and  answer,  and  why  not 
such  a  poem } 

I  heard  a  sickle  rustling, 

Riistling  through  the  corn  ; 
I  heard  a  maid,  had  lost  her  love, 

A  weeping  all  forlorn. 

"  O  let  the  sickle  rustle  ! 

I  care  not  how  it  go  ; 
For  I  have  found  a  lover 

Where  clover  and  violets  blow!" 

"  And  hast  thou  found  a  lover 

Where  clover  and  violets  blow, 
'Tis  I  am  weeping  lonely, 
And  all  my  heart  is  woe  ! " 

1  When  the  Greek  youth  leaves  his  home,  Fauriel  says,  his  family  sing  songs 
of  farewell,  traditional  and  improvised,  to  which  he  often  improvises  a  reply. 
Improvisation,  too,  and  presumably  once  in  the  village  throng,  lies  at  the  founda- 
tion of  the  German  prentice  songs  of  leave-taking,  the  eternal  note  of  sckeiden, 
das  ihut  grdmen,  with  culmination  in  that  exquisite  poem,  probably  not  impro- 
vised, Innspriick,  ich  muss  dich  lassen.  The  ennobling  process  is  interesting,  and 
is  of  a  piece  with  the  process  assumed  by  A.  W.  Schlegel  for  the  ennobling  of 
Greek  epic  out  of  rude  improvisation. 

2  Uhland,  VolksUeder,  I.  78.  In  spite  of  the  two  melodies,  I  have  put  the 
refrain  at  the  beginning,  and  slightly  changed,  as  in  Uhland's  B.,  at  the  end.  The 
actual  song  is  for  the  dance.  See  Bohme,  Altd.  Liederb.,  p.  268.  Only  two  stanzas 
are  given,  —  one  for  the  happy  girl  and  oq«  for  the  lovelorn,  one  the  vortanz, 
the  other  the  nachtanz. 


4l6  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

0  rustle,  sickle,  rustle, 

And  sound  along  the  corn ! 

1  heard  a  maid,  had  lost  her  love, 
A  weeping  all  forlorn. 

No  Stress,  of  course,  is  to  be  laid  on  this  particular  case, 
which  simply  serves  to  show  how  unquestioned  improvisa- 
tion of  quatrains  on  one  of  the  little  tragedies  common 
in  rural  life  could  be  combined  with  the  traditional  refrain 
of  a  reapers'  dance,  and  so  pass  into  popular  lyric. 

Often  this  making  of  a  lyric  calls  in  the  aid  of  repetition, 
and  an  iterated  line  serves  as  thread  to  tie  the  quatrains  to- 
gether ;  such  poems  have  been  noted  already,^  and  were 
called  more  or  less  artificial.  But  they  certainly  suggest 
now  and  then  the  improvisation  of  quatrains  at  the  dance, 
and  belong  there  originally  ;  a  clear  case  may  be  given  from 

Steiermark.'* 

To  thee  Ive  gone  often 

So  happy  and  gay  ; 

To  thee  I'll  go  never,  — 

Too  long  is  the  way. 

Too  long  is  the  way, 

And  the  wood  is  too  thick  ; 
God  keep  you,  my  sweetheart, 

I  wish  you  good  luck  ! 

I  wish  you  good  luck, 

And  all  blessings  at  need, — 
For  the  times  when  you  loved  me 

I  thank  you  indeed  !  ^ 

1  See  above,  p.  208.  2  Firmenich,  II.  742. 

8  The  translation  fails  to  bring  out  the  simplicity  of  these  two  stanzas;  they 

run  thus :  — 

Der  Wag  os  met  z'wait, 

Und  der  Wold  os  mer  z'dick, 

Bhuat  di  Gott,  main  liabs  Schotzel, 

I  wiinsch  dir  viel  Gliick. 

I  wiinsch  dir  viel  Gliick 

Und  es  sull  dir  guat  gian, 
Fiir  die  Zeit,  ols  d'mi  g'liabt  host, 

Bedonk  i  mi  schian. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      417 

Gustav  Meyer  has  followed  this  combination  of  quatrains 
into  a  popular  song,^  perhaps  sprung  from  improvised  col- 
laboration, or  else  rivalry,  at  the  dance,  with  a  pretty  but 
cynical  stanza  added  in  the  process  of  oral  tradition,  — 
itself  a  quatrain  heard  singly  in  Tyrol,  while  the  others,  also 
sung  separately,  seem  to  be  of  Swabian  origin.  The  song 
may  follow  as  a  farewell  to  these  scJinaderhilpjl,  now  rapidly 
passing  into  a  memory  of  simpler  days. 

When  the  Dingelstadt  bells  ring, 

The  street  seems  to  shake ; 
And  1  wish  you  good  luck 

For  another  fine  mate. 

And  I  wish  you  good  luck, 

And  all  blessings  at  need  ; 
For  the  times  when  you  loved  me 

I  thank  you  indeed. 

The  times  when  you  loved  me 

Need  give  you  no  pain. 
No  thousand  times  shall  you 

Think  on  me  again. 

A  little  bit  loving, 

A  little  bit  true, 
And  a  little  bit  faithless,  — 

What  else  could  you  do  ? 

"  The  most  genuine  of  all  folksongs,  and  almost  the  only 
kind  which  is  still  made,"  as  E.  H.  Meyer  says  of  it,  this 
schnaderhilpfl  is  a  single  strophe  of  four  lines,^  complete  in 
itself,  always  improvised  —  though  it  often  becomes  tradi- 
tional —  and  always  in  the  native  dialect ;  it  is  not  a  fragment 

^  Essays,  p.  370 ;  and  see  also  Kogel,  Gesch.  d.  d.  Lit.,  I.  7,  who  thinks  that 
Scandinavian  IjS'S  (plural)  meant  once  a  series  of  these  strophes  composed  by 
dancers  and  so  coming  to  be  a  lied.  E.  H.  Meyer,  Volkskunde,  p.  317,  notes  the 
independent  quatrains  combined  into  an  almlied. 

2  Also  G.  Meyer,  Essays,  pp.  370,  375. 


4l8  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY 

of  some  older  and  longer  song,  but  rather  lends  itself  to 
combination  into  a  popular  lyric  of  oral  tradition. ^  Careful 
comparison  shows  that  similar  quatrains,  probably  of  similar 
origin  in  the  dance,  occur  not  only  in  Welsh,  in  Italian, 
French,  and  Spanish,  in  Lithuanian,  in  Hungarian,  in  Rou- 
manian, Greek,  Russian,  Polish,  everywhere  in  European 
speech,  but  even  in  Syrian,  in  Malay,  and  such  distant  lan- 
guages. It  is  known  in  Chinese.  Most  closely  related  to  it 
are  the  stev  of  Norway,  of  which  Landstad  ^  gives  a  small 
collection  in  his  book  of  Norwegian  ballads.  Granting  that 
the  real  stev  must  be  improvisation,  he  is  too  quick  to  con- 
nect them  with  the  old  scaldic  poetry  and  with  earlier  and 
longer  poems,  regarding  these  quatrains  —  he  hesitates,  how- 
ever, in  stating  the  case  —  as  wreckage  of  ancient  ballads  and 
once  an  effort  of  the  bard.  The  theory  of  debris,  thus  ten- 
tatively asserted,  is  successfully  answered  by  Gustav  Meyer, 
as  it  is  by  a  consideration  of  the  scJinaderhupfl  quoted  in 
these  pages ;  and  it  fares  no  better  here  than  it  does  when 
applied  to  Itahan  sti'ambotti  and  the  artistic  work  of  Theoc- 
ritus and  Vergil.  Indeed,  Landstad's  own  account  of  the 
stev  confutes  his  theory  about  them.  Making  these  quat- 
rains, he  says,^  was  once  a  universal  social  custom,  and  lingers 
even  yet.*  His  picture  of  the  peasants  gathered  for  a  winter 
evening's  amusement,  guests  and  especially  the  older  people 
sitting  at  tables  which  run  along  the  walls,  men  at  one  end, 
women  at  another,  while  the  young  people  dance  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  room ;  the  "  drinking  "  staves  sung  as  the  ale  cups 
go  round,  where  women  often  answer  to  rough  but  jolly 
quatrains  from  the  other  end  of  the  tables,  and  where  every 
person  must  sing  his  stave ;  the  rude  compliments  and  vivac- 

1  Ihid.,  pp.  377  ff. 

*  Norske  Folkeviser,  Christiania,  1853.     See  especially  pp.  365  ff.,  423  ff. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  366. 

*  Lundell,  Paul's  Grundriss,  II.  i.  730,  says  that  even  now  any  adult  in  Iceland 
can  make  verses. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      419 

ities  of  the  dance :  all  this  points  to  a  survival  of  primitive 
custom.  Traditional  verses  often  serve  to  open  the  contest 
nowadays,  but  improvisation  begins  with  the  personal  com- 
bat, and  the  fun  grows  fast.  These  older  staves  have  a 
standing  refrain  for  the  second  and  fourth  lines  of  the 
quatrain ;  ^  but  the  modern  kind  are  like  the  schnaderJiiipJi 
and  are  improvised  throughout.  A  touch  of  "  sentiment  and 
reflection"  is  not  unusual;  for  example:^  — 

I  know  where  to  look  for  my  bridal  mirth,  — 
In  a  coffin  black  deep  down  in  the  earth  ; 
I  know  where  my  bride-bed  soon  shall  stand,  — 
Deep  in  the  earth  in  the  grit  and  sand. 

Verse  of  this  sort  points  to  the  impro\dsations  already  treated 
in  part  under  the  vocero^  and  to  the  songs  which  go  with 
refrains  of  labour,  not  so  much  the  swift  and  jovial  verses  of 
flax-beaters  and  other  workers  in  bands,  as  the  often  tender 
and  melancholy  songs  of  women  grinding  at  the  mill.^  But 
enough  has  been  said  and  quoted  to  show  that  improvisation, 
as  it  detaches  itself  from  communal  refrains,  tends  to  be 
individual,  sentimental,  reflective,  and  so  artistic  and  lyrical 
in  the  modern  sense.  The  quatrain  sung  by  youth  to  maiden 
in  the  dance  is  still  communal  in  its  connotation ;  detached, 
it  smacks  less  and  less  of  the  public  occasion,  tries  a  deeper 
note  of  sentiment,  has  more  and  more  of  the  reflective  and 
confidential ;  so  one  can  come  to  the  mingling  of  passion 
and  art  in  an  ode  of  Sappho,  in  a  lyric  of  Burns.  Moreover, 
parallel  with  this  change  of  quality,  runs  a  process  of  group- 
ing into  songs.  The  scattered  traditional  stanzas,  once 
improvised  as  isolated  quatrains,  gather  at  first  in  pairs,  — 

1  Landstad,  pp.  370  ff. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  376. 

*  The  vocero  is  far  less  individual  than  this  quatrain  or  stave  just  considered, 
because  the  former  is  an  outburst  rather  of  public  grief  than  of  private  emotion. 

*  See  above,  p.  269. 


420  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

the  prevailing  type  is  question  and  answer,  —  to  which  a 
stanza  or  two  is  added  explanatory  of  the  situation  and  the 
season,  often  with  that  refrain  which  is  recognized  as  belong- 
ing with  the  original  occasion ;  and  this  is  the  communal 
lyric,  or,  as  it  is  called  in  a  stricter  use  of  the  term,  folk- 
song. Henceforth,  the  difference  between  a  folksong  and  a 
lyric  is  mainly  between  oral,  traditional  origin  and  the 
deliberate  and  artistic  composition  of  recorded  literature. 

This  study  of  the  beginnings  of  lyric  has  dealt  mainly  with 
sentiment,  hostile  or  erotic,  as  expression  of  an  individual, 
slowly  detaching  itself  from  expression  and  interests  of  the 
clan.  But  reflection,  another  note  of  what  passes  now  for 
lyric  poetry,^  the  element  of  thought,  comes  into  poetic 
expression  just  as  sentiment  comes,  and  seems  to  be  of  equal 
date.  As  the  individual  erotic  song  may  go  back  to  the  con- 
certed dances,  cries,  gestures,  of  a  whole  horde,  at  periods  of 
sexual  excitement  which  were  probably  once  of  uniform  oc- 
currence, so  the  reflective  note  of  a  lyric  poem  could  be 
traced  to  early  communal  thinking.  "  Communal  thinking  " 
is  perhaps  a  vile  phrase ;  comment  on  doings  and  interests 
of  the  horde,  as  distinguished  from  those  chanted  verses 
merely  descriptive  of  the  event  or  fact,  ought  to  be  less  open 
to  objection.  As  a  feat  of  primitive  epic,  the  statement  of 
what  the  horde  has  just  accomplished,  whether  in  hunting  or 
in  war,  has  been  found  to  be  a  constant  element  in  the  songs 
sung  by  savages  to  their  communal  dance ;  while  gesture, 
shout,  recapitulation  in  cadenced  movement,  of  the  same  feat, 
has  the  dramatic  note.     Now  it  is  well  known  that  little  sen- 

1  Definitions  are  notoriously  unsatisfactory  in  poetics.  Contrast  Schleiermacher's 
formula  for  lyric  as  poetry  plus  music,  Aesfhetik,  p.  628,  with  the  laborious  definition 
in  R.  M.  Werner's  Lyrik  unci  Lyriker,  Hamburg  and  Leipzig,  1890,  p.  10,  based 
mainly  on  the  subjective  element.  Confusion  of  form  and  conditions,  which  makes 
lyric  poetry  one  with  music  (see  Dciring,  Kiiustlehre  d.  Aristoteles,  p.  88),  with 
inner  meaning  and  purpose,  has  caused  most  of  the  trouble.  In  one  sense  the  old 
choral  was  the  very  foundation  of  lyric.  The  congregational  psalm  of  the  Hebrews 
is  lyric,  and  so  is  the  solitary  cry  of  the  modern  poet. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      42 1 

tences  detached  from  the  story  or  acting  of  the  event,  but 
suggested  by  it,  belonging  to  it,  are  often  sung  by  these  same 
savages,  now  in  chorus,  and  now  in  individual  improvisation. 
"  Good  hunting  to-day ! "  sang  the  Botocudos ;  which  is  a 
very  different  matter  from  particular  recapitulation  of  the 
hunt,  as  in  a  buffalo-dance  or  the  like.  These  sentences, 
like  gnomic  poetry  at  large,  are  of  most  ancient  date ;  ^  but  it 
is  clear  that  they  soon  passed  under  control  of  the  acute 
thinker,  and  shunned  the  fellowship  of  choral  song :  — 

Einsam  zu  denken,  —  das  ist  weise  ; 
Einsam  zu  singen,  —  das  ist  dumm. 

It  is  also  clear  that  this  element  of  thought  and  meditation 
would  help  very  materially  the  change  from  a  sung  to  a 
recited  verse,  and  hasten,  wherever  it  could  act  upon  poetry, 
the  disintegration  of  communal  song.  Of  course,  an  alliance 
with  sentiment  was  inevitable ;  the  acute  thinker  deserted 
verse  for  prose  and  science,  and  with  the  lapse  of  communal 
singing  and  the  rise  of  solitary  reading,  lyric  came  to  mean 
three  things :  a  subconscious  harmony  of  rhythm,  legacy  of 
the  consenting  throng ;  sentiment,  as  the  expression  of 
individuaUty,  fostered  by  this  confidence  between  solitary 
poet  and  solitary  reader ;  and  reflection,  which  is  now  the 
comment  of  the  individual  on  the  doings  of  the  world  as  a 
whole,  on  the  burden  and  the  mystery,  that  final  horror, 
expressed  by  Leconte  de  Lisle,  at  the  idea  of  unending 
human  woe,  — 

Le  long  rugissement  de  la  vie  ^ternelle.- 

1  Uralt,  says  Usener,  Altgr.  Versbau,  p.  45.     See  above,  p.  95. 

2  As  Matthew  Arnold  reminds  us :  — 

Sophocles,  long  ago, 
Heard  it  on  the  yEgean. 

For  the  prevailing  tone  of  lyric  is  sad,  and  Euterpe  treats  her  poet  as  Genevieve 
treated  Coleridge :  — 

She  loves  me  best  whene'er  I  sing 
The  songs  that  make  her  grieve. 


422  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

This  at  one  end  of  the  chain,  and  the  Botocudos'  choral 
reflection,  "  Good  hunting  to-day  !  "  at  the  other  ;  a  link  mid- 
way, perhaps,  is  the  half  individual,  half  choral  expression  of 
pity  which  those  African  women  put  into  their  song  about 
Mungo  Park,  and  dwelt  upon  in  their  refrain. 

So  much  for  the  beginnings  of  modern  lyric  poetry,  as  an 
individual  and  artistic  expression,  compared  with  the  lyric  of 
a  communal  dance,  the  iterated  refrain  of  a  throng.  "  Mod- 
ern," of  course,  is  a  relative  word ;  and  the  whole  process 
has  been  hinted  rather  than  described.  Holding  fast,  how- 
ever, to  the  facts  of  earliest  and  rudest  improvisation  among 
savages,  holding  fast  to  the  facts  of  universal  improvisation 
as  observed  among  European  peasants,  and  to  the  making  of 
single  songs  out  of  groups  of  these  improvised  stanzas,  we 
are  warranted  in  asserting  that  the  process  is  one  from  com- 
munal to  individual  conditions,  and  begins  on  a  level  of  gen- 
eral, if  not  equal,  abihty  to  make  and  sing  verse,  preferably 
in  the  form  of  a  single  couplet  or  quatrain,  which  is  at  first 
subordinate  to  the  chorus  of  the  throng,  then  meets  it  on 
even  terms,  and  at  last,  losing  its  general  origins  and  its  par- 
ticular individuality  and  coming  to  be  part  of  an  artistic  poem, 
drives  the  discredited  chorus  from  the  field. 

As  regards  epic  poetry,  the  relations  of  the  ballad  and  the 
choral  refrain  have  been  studied  in  preceding  pages.  This 
ballad,  or  narrative  song,  holds  far  more  closely  than  the  lyric 
to  conditions  of  communal  making.  It  abhors  sentiment  and 
reflection,  for  it  keeps  to  the  impersonal,  public  path ;  it  is 
averse  even  from  the  arts  of  variation  save  in  the  form  of 
incremental  repetition,  and  it  clings  to  the  communal  refrain 
and  to  the  communal  dance.  For  this  reason  the  ballad  is 
without  rival  among  recent  forms  of  poetry  as  a  field  for  the 
study  of  surviving  communal  elements ;  joined  with  the  mate- 
rials of  ethnology,  it  gives  the  soundest  reasons  for  construct- 
ing that  curve  of  evolution  which  marks  the  steady  increase 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      423 

of  lyric,  individual,  emotional,  and  reflective  characteristics 
in  poetic  progress.  With  its  relations  to  the  epic  there  is 
here  no  space  to  deal  in  any  satisfactory  way.^  The  epic, 
however,  is  now  conceded  by  every  one  to  belong  to  times 
which  by  no  means  can  be  confused  with  the  beginnings  of 
poetry  ;  M.  Tarde  and  his  theory  that  literature  begins  with 
a  "great  book"  like  the  Bible  or  the  Homeric  poems,^  can 
hardly  expect  an  answer  on  any  serious  and  scientific  ground. 
The  narrative  song  or  ballad  goes  back,  of  course,  to  that 
universal  gift  of  people  in  low  levels  of  culture,  the  power 
to  turn  a  contemporary  event  into  song,  into  the  rhythm 
of  the  communal  dance,  as  is  still  done  by  Samoans  and 
by  nearly  all  savage  tribes.  All  was  momentary  in  this 
initial  act.  The  rhythm  was  there  in  cry  and  beat  of  foot ; 
the  event  was  there ;  and  the  bridge  of  articulate  words  to 
connect  these  two  elements  was  of  the  shortest  and  simplest 
kind.  The  variation,  the  incremental  repetition,  are  obvious 
advances ;  but  it  is  worth  while  to  note  that  the  almost  end- 
less repetition  of  a  verse  or  two,  describing  some  event  or 
situation  close  at  hand,  is  diminished  in  corresponding  ratio 
to  the  growing  power  of  tradition,  as  if  the  memory  of  yester- 
day's poetry,  of  last  year's  poetry,  gradually  took  the  place 
of  this  contemporary  repetition, — the  "stretched  metre" 
coming  in  course  of  time  to  be  the  "  antique  song."     Every- 

1  The  claim  of  Usener  may  be  noted  ("  Der  Stoff  des  griechischen  Epos," 
Siizungsber.  d.  Kais.  Acad.  d.  Wiss.  zti  Wien,  Bd.  137,  pp.  18  ff.),  where  he  puts 
the  ceremonies  at  the  hearthstone,  primitive  ancestor-worship,  as  the  real  begin- 
ning of  epic  song.  The  offering  to  an  ancestor  must  have  been  made  "  with 
music,  prayer,  and  song."  Hence  the  epos.  It  is  true  that  a  lyric  of  this  sort  is 
older  than  any  epic,  —  the  epic  which  Hegel  pushed  forward  as  earliest  form  of 
poetry,  just  as  the  renaissance  had  put  it  above  the  drama  in  dignity,  —  and  may 
well  have  helped  the  later  epic  process.  But  the  evidence  of  ethnology  shows 
that  rude  songs  at  the  tribal  dance,  which  refer  to  tribal  doings,  must  be  far  older 
than  any  ceremonies  of  the  primitive  hausvater  at  his  family  altar. 

2  A.  W.  Schlegel  said  that  the  Homeric  poems  were  improvised;  but  he  dis- 
tinguished between  rude  communal  improvisation  and  that  of  incipient  art. 
Vorksungen,  II.  119  f.,  243. 


424  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

where  among  savages,  when  the  improvised  song  at  feast 
and  dance  finds  favour,  it  is  passed  down  as  part  of  the  tradi- 
tional stock.  And  so  one  comes  to  that  state  of  things  where, 
as  Ten  Brink  has  put  it  so  well,  song  oscillates  between  pro- 
duction and  reproduction,  that  is,  between  improvisation  and 
memory.  This  is  the  period  of  the  early  epic.  When  delib- 
eration and  conscious  art  come  in,  and  yet  the  old  alliance  of 
spontaneous  production  and  living  memory  is  not  broken  up, 
then  is  the  golden  age  of  epic  verse ;  then  Homer,  whoever 
or  whatever  he  may  be,  can  work  out  the  perfect  union  of  art 
and  nature. 

Turning  to  the  drama,  one  asks  whether  improvisation  can 
also  be  found  in  this  form  of  poetry,  taking  it,  as  in  the  case 
of  epic  and  lyric,  out  of  communal  control  into  the  province 
of  individual  art.  Aristotle  has  answered  the  question  in  that 
interesting  account  of  Greek  drama  quoted  above  ;  and  he  has 
distinctly  affirmed  the  passage  from  a  communal  origin  in  a 
wild  chorus  through  rude  improvisations  up  to  the  triumphs 
of  Hellenic  tragedy.  Nietzsche,  in  a  book  also  quoted  above 
at  considerable  length,  has  studied  this  transition  as  a  con- 
trast of  the  Dionysian  and  Apollinian  elements  of  poetry. 
Latin  drama,  of  course,  is  a  copy  of  the  Greek ;  but  the 
imitations  of  a  foreign  and  finished  model  were  preceded 
among  the  Romans  by  rude  improvisations  at  the  festivals 
of  the  countryfolk,  where  anything  like  copy  and  importation 
must  be  ruled  out  of  the  case.^  In  Italy  this  rude  improvisa- 
tion of  comedy  lingered  later  in  survivals  that  were  of  course 
mingled  with  many  literary  influences  ;  so  too  the  rough  drama 
of  the  fairs  in  France,^  the  popular  plays  in  Germany,  and 

1  Livy,  VII.  2,  gives  an  account  of  this  change. 

2  See  Maurice  Drack,  Le  Theatre  de  la  Foire,  la  Comedie  Italienne,  et  P  Opera- 
comiqtie,  Paris,  1889.  Vol.  I.  has  a  sketch  of  the  movement — from  1678  on  — 
indicated  in  the  title.  It  began  with  the  piece  a  couplets,  and  passed  gradually 
into  modern  comic  opera.  The  great  popular  fair  of  St.  Law^rence,  at  Paris,  was 
the  scene  of  part  of  this  development. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      425 

even  mysteries  and  moralities  as  played  by  the  guilds,  retained 
much  of  the  old  communal  character  and  were  long  at  the 
mercy  of  improvised  speeches,  however  fixed  and  intricate 
the  plot  and  scenes.  Many  of  these  survivals  —  such  as  the 
mummers'  plays  —  became  also  fixed  in  the  words,  but  that 
was  when  the  plays  had  gone  to  fossil  and  the  custom  itself 
lingered  as  by  a  sort  of  inertia.  Italian  comedy  for  some 
time  had  a  dialogue  "  mainly  extemporaneous " ;  ^  and  as 
these  plays  grew  into  urban  favour,  the  improvised  dia- 
logue was  graced  by  a  higher  tone  and  a  more  dramatic 
purpose,  lasting  almost  into  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
coDimedia  dclV  arte,  in  other  words,  is  simply  the  improvised 
play  of  peasants  passing  into  artistic  and  professional  control, 
but  still  holding  to  certain  communal  f  eatures.^  The  realistic 
elements  of  dialect,  satire  of  certain  professions,  and  the  like, 
point  back  to  the  satiric  quatrains  and  songs  at  the  dance ; 
and  the  dance  is  always  at  hand  in  farce  and  low  comedy 
down  to  this  day.  In  Spain  the  coplas  took  a  dramatic 
turn ;  improvised  question  and  answer,  with  the  situation 
to  fit,  easily  became  a  kind  of  drama,  although  the  records 
are  by  no  means  full  or  accurate,  and  other  influences 
played  a  conspicuous  part.^  The  dance  and  play,  described 
in  Do7i  Quixote,^  at  Camacho's  wedding,  may  be  a  "  beauti- 
fied "  country  mask  with  more  or  less  extemporaneous  songs 
and  dialogue.  The  main  point  about  these  popular  plays  is 
their  testimony  that  the  drama  passed  from  communal  chorus, 
—  dancing,  song,  gesture,  and  refrain,  —  by  the  way  of  impro- 

1  Garnett,  Italian  Literature,  p.  306,  traces  this  comedy  back  through  Tuscan 
and  Neapolitan  peasants  to  the  "  Greek  rustics  who  smeared  their  faces  with 
wine-lees  at  the  Dionysiac  festivals,  and  from  whose  improvised  songs  and  gestures 
Greek  comedy  was  developed." 

"  Burckhardt,  Cultur  der  Reyt.,  II.  40,  thinks  that  such  well-known  characters 
as  Pantalone,  the  Doctor,  Arlecchino,  may  be  in  some  fashion  connected  with 
masked  figures  in  the  old  Roman  plays. 

3  Ticknor,  Spanish  Literature,  I.  232  f. 

*  Second  Part,  Chap.  XX. 


426  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

visation,  into  its  new  estate  of  art ;  even  under  Elizabeth  the 
theatre  was  no  stranger  to  extemporaneous  dialogue,  and  that 
pathetic  appeal,  in  which,  perhaps,  Shakspere  more  completely 
drops  his  "  irony,"  his  objective  mask,  than  anywhere  else, 
not  only  testifies  to  a  nobler  conception  of  the  drama,  but 
to  the  clinging  abuse.  It  was  not  the  clowns  alone  who 
spoke  more  than  was  set  down  for  them ;  though  their 
fooling  was  most  hurtful  because  they  made  jests  offhand 
with  persons  in  the  audience,^  and  sang  irrelevant 
doggerel  verse.  Some  of  these  verses  have  perhaps  crept 
into  the  text  of  Lear.  Often,  however,  the  jester  had 
full  license  to  entertain  the  crowd  by  a  piece  long  known 
as  a  jig.  Tarlton,  the  famous  jester,^  "  was  most  celebrated 
for  his  extemporal  rhyming  and  his  jigs,"  which  were  a 
combination  of  improvised  song  and  a  dance,  accompanied 
by  tabor  and  pipe.  But  the  jig  was  also  used  for  songs  in 
dialogue,  with  a  dramatic  leaning ;  "  a  proper  new  Jigg,  to 
be  sung  dialogue  wise,  of  a  man  and  woman  that  would 
needs  be  married,"  is  preserved  among  the  Roxburghe 
Ballads.  Amplified  a  little,  the  jig  was  carried  across  the 
water  by  English  comedians,  and  meeting  similar  native 
forms  of  more  or  less  extemporaneous  verse,  with  dance 
and  farce,  became  the  singspiel^  But  the  improvisation 
of  one's  lines  to  fit  the  "  plot "  or  scenario  of  far  nobler 
performance  was  common  on  the  English  stage,*  and  may 
have    had    Shakspere's   indulgence   if    not    his    sympathy ; 

1  Malone's  Shakspere,  1821,  III.  131. 

2  Tarlton' s  Jests  .  .  .  ed.  J.  O,  Halliwell,  London,  1844,  pp.  xviii  f.  (Shak- 
spere Society).  "As  Antipater  Sidonius,"  says  the  comparative  Meres,  "was 
famous  for  extemporall  verse  in  Greeke  ...  so  was  our  Tarleton." 

2  See  Bolte,  Die  Singspiele  der  englischen  Komodianten  ttnd  ihrer  Nachfolger, 
Hamburg  u.  Leipzig,  1893,  pp.  50  ff.  He  prints  parallel  copies  of  "Singing 
Simpkin  "  and  the  German  "  Pickelhering  in  der  Kiste." 

■•  "  Passages  were  often  left  for  the  extempore  declamation  of  the  actors.  Some- 
times the  whole  conduct  of  the  piece  depended  on  their  powers  of  improvisation." 
Symonds,  Shakspere's  Predecessors,  p.  66. 


THE   EARLIEST  DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF  POETRY      427 

Von  Stein  ^  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  formal  character 
of  Shakspere's  dramatic  work  is  "a  fixed  mimetic  improv- 
isation,"—  whatever  that  may  mean.  Of  the  fact,  how- 
ever, there  is  no  question.  Tom  Nash,  in  his  Lenten  Sttijfe^ 
telHng  of  the  trouble  he  had  from  that  "  imperfit  embrion  of 
my  idle  houres,  the  Isle  of  Dogs,"  explains  this  description 
of  his  play  by  saying  that  having  "  begun  but  the  induction 
and  first  act  of  it,  the  other  foure  acts,  without  my  consent 
or  the  least  guesse  of  my  drift  or  scope,  by  the  players  were 
supplied,"  —  a  source  of  mischief  for  all  hands.  It  was  from 
Italy  that  the  custom  came  to  improvise  even  tragic  speeches  ; 
and  the  passages  in  the  Spanish  Tragedy^  where  Hieronymo 
is  preparing  his  play,  show  what  was  expected :  — 

It  was  determined  to  have  been  acted 
By  gentlemen  and  scholars  too ; 
Such  as  could  tell  what  to  speak.  .  .  . 
Here,  my  lords,  are  several  abstracts  drawn, 
For  each  of  you  to  note  your  parts, 
And  act  it,  as  occasion's  offered  you. 

Italy,  to  be  sure,  may  have  influenced  the  habit  of  improvisa- 
tion in  formal  drama  ;  but  the  custom  is  a  survival  rather 
than  a  growth,  and  the  statement  that  Sir  Thomas  More  in  his 
youth  —  the  tradition  is  preserved  also  in  a  tragedy  which 
bears  More's  name  as  the  subject  —  showed  extraordinary 
power  of  improvisation  in  a  play,  must  not  be  taken  *  as  indi- 
cating a  tendency  in  Henry  VIII's  time  which  came  to  be  a 
widespread  habit  under  Elizabeth.  Such  skill  of  improvisa- 
tion in  plays  diminishes  as  artistic  and  deliberate  drama 
comes  to  the  fore.  So  with  the  mask.  At  first  a  dance, 
with    songs   and    improvised    dialogue    for   the   maskers,  it 

1  Vorlesungen  iiber  Aesthetik,  pp.  84  f. 

2  Ed.  Grosart,  V.  200. 

'  HazHtt-Dodsley,  V.  149,  151. 

*  As,  for  example,  Schwab  takes  it :  Das  Sckauspiel  im  Schauspiel,  Wien  u. 
Leipzig,  1896,  p.  32. 


428  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

offered  great  opportunities  for  artistic  work ;  Ben  Jonson  and 
Milton  can  tell  how  the  process  went  on,  and  with  what 
results. 

Improvisation  in  the  drama  of  comparatively  modern  times 
could  be  followed  into  remoter  places,  for  example  into  Per- 
sia, where  the  comedies  are  mainly  in  extemporaneous  dia- 
logue. Even  in  Tahiti  what  passes  for  drama  is  improvised;^ 
and  all  evidence  makes  for  this  state  of  things  in  the  primi- 
tive play.  The  earliest  form  of  the  drama  consists  mainly  of 
action  and  gesture  in  the  dance,^  so  as  to  repeat  a  contempo- 
rary event  of  communal  interest,  —  war  and  the  chase,  or, 
with  farming  folk,  and  more  in  reminiscence,  the  doings  of 
seedtime  and  harvest ;  it  is  clear  that  the  rude  songs  and 
shouts  that  went  with  step  and  gesture^  and  mimicry  must 
have  been  improvised.  In  late  stages  of  tribal  life,  certain 
dances  and  the  songs  that  go  with  them  become  absolutely 
fixed,  a  ritual  calling  for  unusual  care  in  the  learning  of  it ; 
such  is  the  American  buffalo  dance.*  But  in  the  earliest 
drama  dance,  gesture  and  choral  song  were  the  main  ele- 
ments, and  the  variation  from  those  repeated  shouts  took,  so 
it  would  seem,  the  path  of  short  improvised  and  individual 
utterance.  Those  improvised  stanzas,  to  be  sure,  which 
plagued  the  frustrated  Faroe  fisher,  dancing  perforce  to  his 

1  Bruchmann,  Poetik,  p.  17. 

2  The  material  has  been  set  forth  above  in  the  section  on  the  communal  dance; 
for  early  dramatic  dances  of  fight,  hunting,  and  the  like,  see  especially  pp.  336  ff., 
and  the  passage  on  lac,  p.  340. 

2  On  gesture  as  common  and  universally  understood  expression,  see  Darwin, 
Descent  of  Man,  2d  ed.,  I.  276  f.  "Men  of  all  races"  have  a  "mutual  compre- 
hension of  gesture-language";  they  all  have  "the  same  expression  on  their 
features,"  and  "  the  same  inarticulate  cries  when  excited  by  the  same  emotions." 
See  also  Tylor,  Early  History  of  Mankind,  chapters  on  Gesture- Language;  and 
American  Antiquarian,  II.  219,  G.  Mallery  on  Indian  Sign  Language.  This 
universal  validity  of  gesture  is  highly  significant  for  the  beginnings  of  poetry,  for 
the  rude  cries  which  precede  language  are  probably  of  the  same  order  as  the 
gestures.     See  Chap.  II.,  Wundt's  Volkerpsychologie. 

*  Bastian,  "  Masken  und  Maskereien,"  Zst.  f.  Volkerpsych.,  XIV.  347. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      429 

own  shame  before  the  dancing  and  singing  throng,  led  to  a 
narrative  song,  a  ballad,  and  so  in  time  might  lead  to  an  epos ; 
but  in  the  making  of  the  stanzas,  along  with  mimicry  and 
dance,  there  is  more  of  the  dramatic  than  of  the  epic  ele- 
ment.^ The  improvised  song-duel,  of  which  so  much  has 
been  said,  is  incipient  drama  ;  and  all  those  songs  sung  in 
cadence  by  groups  of  workers  in  the  wine-press,  at  reaping, 
pulling,  even  when  marching,  and  rushing  into  the  fight,  have 
the  dramatic  trait  so  far  as  they  go  with  the  appropriate  ac- 
tion. So,  too,  the  festal  recapitulation  of  labour,  with  its 
appropriate  songs  and  movement,  would  lend  itself  to  dra- 
matic improvisation  more  easily  and  hence  earlier  than  to 
narrative ;  the  art  of  telling  a  tale,  as  may  be  learned  from 
ethnology  as  well  as  from  the  observation  of  children's 
games,  is  an  accomplishment  which  comes  much  later  than 
the  art  of  mimicry  and  rude  improvisation  at  the  dance.  The 
improvising  singer  and  dancer  detaches  himself  from  the 
throng  to  give  an  isolated  part  of  the  action,^  and  may  put 
it  into  words  to  suit  his  gesture  and  steps  ;  or  two  persons 
may  dance,  gesticulate,  and  sing  alternately  in  what  answers 
dramatically  to  the  amoebean  song,  —  an  actual  fight  may 
have  found  this  kind  of  recapitulation  at  a  very  early  stage 
of  the  poetic  art.  True,  as  was  noted  above,  Wallaschek 
will  not  allow  that  this  primitive  form  of  drama  had  anything 
to  do  with  poetry ;  it  was  pantomime,  he  says,  without  words, 
like  the  mimic  dances  of  the  Damaras,  the  Fans,  and  other 
savage  tribes.  But  it  is  beyond  question  that  rude  songs  are 
often  sung  along  with  the  acting  and  the  mimicry;  and  every 

1  See  Grosse  on  the  two  "  roots  "  of  the  drama,  Anf.  d.  Kunst,  pp.  254  f.  On 
the  mimicry  of  different  tribes  in  the  communal  dance,  see  Bruchmann,  Poetik, 
pp.  208  ff.;  Wallaschek,  Prim.  Music,  Chap.  VIII. 

2  The  conspicuous  performer,  —  the  "  entertainer  "  or  soloist,  —  grows  less  and 
less  prominent  as  one  gets  upon  lower  levels  of  culture.  The  earliest  distinction 
of  this  sort  was  probably  achieved  by  the  priest,  conjurer,  medicine-man,  shaman, 
or  whatever  his  special  function. 


430  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

consideration^  makes  it  probable  that  the  pantomime  pure 
and  simple,  with  distinct  repression  of  the  desire  to  give  vent 
to  the  feelings  by  shout  and  word  and  song,  is  an  artistic  not 
to  say  artificial  development^  of  the  original  drama  along  the 
lines  of  a  painful,  concentrated  imitation,  and  is  almost  a  pro- 
fessional affair.  Then  there  is  the  "  speaking  pantomime," 
so  called.^  In  short,  the  communal  origin  of  the  drama  was 
surely  where  Wagner  declared  it  to  be,  in  a  combination  of 
gesture,  dance,  and  song,  the  whole  man  active  "  from  top  to 
toe,"  and  also,  one  may  add,  active  as  a  member  of  a  thor- 
oughly and  concertedly  active  throng.  Even  the  animal  and 
bird  dances,  favourite  among  savage  tribes,  and  supposed  to 
be  pure  pantomime,  have  the  imitated  cries  of  the  model  in 
time  with  the  dance  ;  and  this  is  a  kind  of  poetry,  lingering 
in  refrains  like  Walther's  tandaradei .  More  than  this,  it  is 
fairly  certain  that  word  and  gesture*  went  together  in  the 
early  stages  of  speech.  As  Letourneau  points  out,^  the  word 
was  too  uncertain  to  stand  by  itself,  and  needed  the  bodily 
movement  that  went  with  it ;  ^  while  the  sounds  instinctively 

^  As  Wallaschek  recedes  from  his  proposition,  the  examples  have  more  and 
more  mention  of  words  and  song  together  with  the  action;  for  example,  pp.  217  ff. 

2  This  must  always  be  taken  into  account.  As  Wallaschek  says  of  an  Aus- 
tralian "  corrobberee,"  however  primitive  it  may  seem,  "  it  is  a  well-prepared  and 
elaborated  dance,  which  it  takes  both  time  and  practice  to  excel  in." 

8  Wallaschek,  pp.  223  f. 

*  From  gesture  back  to  facial  expression  and  other  signs  now  unknown  because 
speech  has  taken  their  place,  is  an  inviting  path,  but  not  to  be  trodden  now. 
From  the  Kansas  City  Star,  date  unfortunately  lost,  may  be  quoted  an  interview 
with  Ilagenbeck,  the  lion-tamer.  "  We  can't  see,"  he  said,  "  the  expression  of  a 
lion's  face,  except  of  rage,  but  his  companions  can.  .  .  .  Did  you  ever  see  one 
animal  fail  to  understand  another?  I  never  saw  such  an  instance.  ...  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  what  we  call  mind-reading  is  mere  survival  here  and  there 
of  the  lost  sixth  sense,  which  was  probably  common  to  primitive  man,  and  which 
animals  possess  to  this  day."  Mr.  Ilagenbeck  could  furnish  an  interesting  sup- 
plement to  Darwin's  book  On  the  Expression  of  Emotions. 

^  Work  quoted,  p.  28,  speaking  of  Australian  song  and  dance.     See  also  p.  201. 

^  Sign-language  of  later  date,  as  studied  by  Mallery  among  the  American 
Indians,  cannot  be  regarded  as  primitive  in  this  genetic  sense.     It  comes  to  be  a 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      431 

Uttered  in  tune  to  the  cadence  of  labour  and  play  were 
felt  to  lend  force  to  the  dramatic  representation  and  fill  out 
the  mere  suggestion  of  gesture.  An  artistic  series  of  move- 
ments alone,^  an  artistic  series  of  words  alone,  would  be  a 
later  triumph  ;  improvisation  of  new  words  to  the  traditional 
cadence,  and  to  the  given,  and  in  a  sense  obligatory  gestures, 
would  mark  early  progress  in  the  making  of  this  primitive 
kind  of  poetry. 

Drama,  then,  in  the  widest  sense,  is  the  "imitation  "  of  life 
by  means  of  remembered  and  repeated  movements,  induced 
by  the  feeling  of  social  elation,  and  made  possible  by  the 
cadence  of  social  consent  in  the  dance,  accompanied  by  sounds 
which  instinctively  follow  this  cadence  of  the  action  and  find 
their  stay  as  well  as  their  suggestion  in  the  regular  recurrence 
of  rhythm.  It  must  have  followed  hard  upon  the  discovery  of 
consent  in  common  step  and  common  cry,  which,  if  one  choose, 
one  may  call  primitive  lyric ;  the  other  may  pass  as  primitive 
drama.  In  perspective  they  seem  almost  contemporaneous  in 
origin.  The  question  of  priority,  debated  with  so  much 
warmth,  thus  becomes  a  question  of  names,  and  not  a  very 
important  question  at  best.  It  is  a  matter  of  differentiation 
and  growth  from  a  common  origin,  which  may  be  described  as 
dramatic  or  lyric,  according  as  one  understands  the  terms,  and 
which  certainly  had  both  elements  in  it.  It  was  rhythmic,  and 
it  was  an  outlet  for  communal  emotion  ;  it  was  imitated  action, 

highly  developed  art  and  calls  for  considerable  skill  in  the  making  as  well  as  acute- 
ness  in  interpretation. 

^  As  in  dances  of  the  Greeks,  now  felt  to  be  a  lost  art.  On  this  matter  of 
gesture  and  signs,  see  an  excellent  book  by  Sittl,  Die  Geb'drden  der  Griechen  und 
Romer,  Leipzig,  1890;  his  accounts  of  the  attempt  "  die  Volker  durch  die  Zeichen- 
sprache  zu  verbriidern,"  with  reference  to  Leibnitz  and  others;  of  orgiastic 
ecstasies  ;  and,  of  course,  the  study  of  Greek  gesture  in  art  and  poetry,  are  all 
instructive.  For  primitive  relations,  Darwin's  book  On  the  Expressions  of  Emo- 
tions, etc.,  1872,  is  still  main  authority.  Gestures,  like  sounds,  are  either  instinc- 
tive or  called  out  by  the  will;  and  any  study  of  progress  in  the  dramatic  art  must 
concern  itself  with  these  fundamental  elements  of  acting. 


432  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

with  momentary  and  spontaneous  suggestions ;  and  it  can  be 
called  narrative  or  epic  only  by  unwarranted  stretching  of 
the  words,  though  the  slightly  reminiscent  factor  in  the  case 
may  be  called  an  epic  germ.  Finally,  the  differentiation  and 
growth  from  this  communal  poetry  of  a  primitive  stage  of 
culture  must  have  been  mainly  the  work  of  improvisation,  or 
individual  assertion,  acting  on  the  communal  elements,  and 
leading  to  disintegration  and  new  combinations  in  processes 
which  varied  with  the  conditions  of  race  and  environment.^ 
One  suggestive  fact,  however,  is  to  be  noted.  The  drama,  in 
a  broad  sense,  is  the  beginning  of  poetry ;  it  is  also  the  end 
and  perfection  of  the  art,  and  this  by  a  communal  reaction. 
There  are  centripetal  as  well  as  centrifugal  forces ;  if  the 
individual  is  forever  breaking  away  from  the  throng  and 
carrying  poetry  into  lonely  paths  of  deliberation,  sentiment, 
artistry,  the  throng,  mainly  by  that  subtle  suggestion  of  con- 
sent in  rhythm,  is  forever  calling  the  poet  back  to  his  com- 
munal point  of  departure.  We  have  seen  how  slowly  the 
communal  beginnings  of  poetry,  ■ —  to  us  like  geological 
periods,  because  they  have  sent  down  to  us  no  records, 
and  only  a  few  hints  of  their  existence,  —  yielded  even  to 
the  tentative  progress  of  individual  art,  and  what  long  ages 
must  have  contented  themselves  with  songs  of  the  horde 
and  the  iteration  of  the  refrain  in  a  tribal  dance ;  it  is  equally 


1  It  would  be  useless  to  attempt  a  1)ilili<)graphy  of  this  subject.  A.  W.  Schlegel's 
historical  account  of  the  drama  and  its  relations  to  epic  and  lyric  is  still  useful. 
See  especially  Varies.,  I.  124;  II.  317,  321,  325.  Eugen  Wolff's  return  to  the 
priority  of  epic,  —  Prolegomena,  etc.,  p.  10;  "Vorstudien  zur  Poetik,"  Zsl.  f.  vgl. 
Liti.,  V\. /^zz^,  —  fails  to  satisfy  the  student  of  ethnological  eviflence;  like  most 
writers  from  the  aesthetic  point  of  view,  Wolff  neglects  to  study  the  poetry  of  the 
throng,  the  choral,  the  dance,  liarring  this  same  fault,  there  is  considerable  truth 
in  the  view  of  Burdach  (letter  to  Schercr,  in  the  latter's  Poetik,  pp.  296  f.),  that 
epic  and  drama  are  wrongly  taken  as  extreme  antithesis  in  poetry,  whereas  lyric 
and  drama  arc  really  "  die  beiden  Urphanomene."  Little  profit  for  the  historical 
student  of  poetry  is  to  be  found  in  essays  like  Veil  Valentin's  "  Poetische  Gattun- 
gen,"  in  Zsi.  f.  vgl.  I.itt.,  N.  F.,  V.  35  ft 


THE    EARLIEST    DIFFERENTIATIONS    OF   POETRY      433 

true  that  the  communal  instinct  still  summons  poetry  back 
from  its  hiding-place  with  the  poet  in  that  "ivory  tower," 
and  bids  it  tread  the  ways  of  open  and  crowded  life.  In  the 
drama  poetry  may,  indeed,  find  its  final  form,  as  Goethe 
declared,  but  it  is  also  coming  back  in  some  degree  to  the 
instincts  and  habit  of  its  prime ;  it  is  recalling  its  forces  from 
the  scattered  and  lonely  paths  of  individual  thought  for  a 
distinctly  communal  reaction.  Even  the  opera,  the  ballet,^ 
though  in  less  marked  degree,  show  this  reactionary  com- 
munal spirit.  The  communal  elements  of  action,  dance, 
music,  scene,^  all  of  which  Aristotle  had  reckoned  along 
with  drama  and  epos  as  a  part  of  poetry,  are  thus  variously 
restored.  Narrative  is  banished  in  favour  of  the  plot,  which 
at  least  seems  to  be  natural  action  ;  deliberate  lyric  effort, 
the  solitary  thought,  is  rejected  for  what  at  least  seems  to  be 
improvised  or  spontaneous  speech  of  the  actors ;  dancing  and 
festal  expression  may  or  may  not  be  present,  and  so  with 
music,  but  the  rhythm  is  deputy  for  the  cadence  of  dancing 
feet ;  and  finally  there  is  what  seems  to  be  the  real  world 
of  men,  the  scene.  These  realistic  effects,  these  chariot- 
races  and  locomotives  on  the  stage,  whatever  one  despises 
most  heartily  in  the  degenerate  drama  of  the  day,  are  the 
reaction  from  excesses  of  subjective  poetry  toward  actual 
life  and  the  tendency  toward  communal  conditions  which 
art  always  shows  when  it  deals  with  a  public  and  abandons 
the  confidences  of  author  and  reader.'^  It  is  perhaps  too 
much  to  assert  that  the  drama  was  done  to  death  through 

^  See  Blankenburg's  excellent  article  on  the  ballet  in  his  Ziisatze,  I.  154  ff. 
La  Motte,  in  his  ballet  of  Europe  Galante,  1697,  made  the  ballet  an  object  ib 
itself  and  in  its  own  action;  here  "  entspringt  Tanz  und  Gesang  aus  der  eigenen 
Gemiithsstimmung  der  handelnden  Personen."     This  is  communal  revival. 

2  That  is,  ^^.^. 

^  "Daudet  me  dit  .  .  .  '  Je  crois  decidement  avoir  trouve  la  formule;  le  livre 
c'est  pour  I'individu,  le  theStre  c'est  pour  la  foule.' "  Journal  des  Goncourt, 
VIII.  (30  Jan. ,.1890),  129. 


434  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF    POETRY 

excess  of  that  "  lyric  cry,"  and  by  a  tendency  which  devel- 
oped character  at  the  expense  of  action  ;  but  the  counter 
movement  has  been  toward  the  mass  and  rude  effects  of  force. 
In  the  eyes  of  some  uncritical  folk,  the  lack  of  distinct  in- 
dividual characters,  the  effect  of  a  homogeneous  mob  of 
actors,  the  crude  but  vigorous  course  of  events,  in  early  his- 
tories and  miracle  plays,  would  make  better  claim  to  the  title 
of  drama  than  the  subtile  characterization  of  Shakspere  and 
the  humours  of  Jonson ;  arma,  they  might  maintain,  should 
come  before  vinim  for  the  playwright ;  and  if  any  comfort 
can  be  gathered  from  our  deplorable  modern  drama,  it  may 
possibly  lurk  in  this  idea  of  the  return  to  communal  art.  In 
any  case,  it  is  the  price  which  our  age  has  to  pay  for  the 
piercingly  subjective  character  of  its  lyric  poetry.  Epic,  in 
any  objective  and  vital  form,  has  vanished,  and  the  drama, 
desperate  in  its  struggle  for  life,  turns  to  demos  as  to  a  long- 
forgotten  friend. 

Before  one  leaves  the  beginnings  of  poetry,  its  earliest  dis- 
integration in  point  of  treatment  and  theme,  and  goes  back  to 
that  improvising  poet,  in  order  to  glance  again  at  the  beginnings 
of  artistry  and  the  decline  of  communal  power,  one  has  two 
elements  of  the  main  subject  with  which  it  is  well  to  come 
to  terms.  Besides  the  subject-matter  of  poetry,  there  is  its 
style,  its  form ;  between  the  style,  or  figurative  element  in 
poetry  on  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  hand,  its  material  divi- 
sions of  drama,  epos,  lyric,  is  that  vast  and  ill-defined  province 
assigned  to  myth.  Now  claimed  as  metaphor,  and  offspring 
of  earliest  language,  now  as  drama  of  nature,  now  as  the  tale 
told  by  primitive  fancy  in  response  to  primitive  curiosity, 
now  as  the  lyric  or  hymn  which  embodied  man's  first  religious 
impulse,  this  fugitive  and  exquisite  creature  has  had  as  many 
masters,  has  been  dragged  over  as  many  paths,  and  has  kept 
as  unimpaired  beauty,  as  that  famous  daughter  of  the  sou- 
dan  of  Babylonia,  aflfianced  to  the  king  of  Garbo.     Of   all 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      435 

these  temporary  masters  none  is  so  comprehensive  in  his  gal- 
lantry as  A.  W.  Schlegel,  ^  who  hails  myth  as  the  source  of 
poetry,  of  philosophy  even,  as  the  soul  of  primitive  language, 
as  "  nature  in  poetic  robes,"  and  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that 
modern  physical  science  could  easily  be  stated  in  terms  of 
ancient  mythology.  Myth,  indeed,  is  such  a  wide  word  with 
Schlegel  that  it  covers  the  romances  of  Arthur  and  Charle- 
magne;^ and  when  one  reflects  that  folklore  has  since  claimed 
its  share  of  mythological  territory,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
brutal  folk  who  speak  for  a  new  euphemerism  call  myth  an 
impudent  baggage  with  no  religion  in  her  and  only  a  touch 
or  so  of  poetry,  the  case  is  complicated.  Over  a  path  so  rid- 
dled with  pitfalls  one  is  not  anxious  to  walk ;  but  to  treat  the 
beginnings  of  poetry  without  touching  myth  is  out  of  the 
question,  and  a  few  steps  must  be  made  if  only  to  secure 
a  point  of  view.  We  shall  consider  myth  in  its  relation  to 
primitive  verse,  and  shall  then  turn  to  the  kindred  topic 
of  early  figurative  language  and  poetical  style. 

Concerning  the  source  and  function  and  meaning  of  myths  ^ 
a  long  battle  has  been  waged,  and  noise  of  it  is  still  ringing 
in  our  ears;  but  the  fiercer  struggle  seems  just  now  to  have 
come  to  a  kind  of  truce,  and  the  warriors,  as  in  that  other 
contest  over  the  origin  of  language,  appear  to  be  lying  on 
their  arms.  The  more  one  knows  of  early  civilization,  it 
would  seem,  the  less  one  feels  inclined  to  dogmatize  about 
the  source  of  myths ;  while  with  regard  to  their  meanings, 
that  exhilarating  and  harmless  pastime,  where  scholar  after 
scholar  came  forward  with  his  solution,  where  Bacon  in  older 
days  turned  classic  myth  into  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients,  and 
where,  in  later  times,  Simrock  gave  a  haec  fabiila  docet  for 

^  Vorlesungen,  Stuttgart,  1884,  I.  329  ff.,  342,  344  ff. 
^  Ibid.,  III.  no. 

8  See  the  present  author's  article  on  "  Mythology  "  in  the  new  edition  of  John- 
son's Cydopcedia. 


436  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

every  shred  of  Germanic  fancy  and  fable ;  ^  where  Uhland, 
in  his  beautiful  book  on  the  Myth  of  Thor,  blew  one  of  the 
most  exquisite  and  irridescent  bubbles  that  ever  delighted 
the  poetic  eye  and  broke  at  the  touch  of  common  sense ; 
where  Max  Muller  and  his  friends  converted  the  primitive 
Aryan  now  into  a  fellow  of  the  prettiest  and  most  fanciful 
habit  of  mind,  with  his  interest  in  sunsets,  and  stars,  and 
vanishing  dewdrops,  now  into  a  resolute  and  saner  Lear  bent 
on  knowing  the  cause  of  thunder ;  a  pastime,  finally,  in 
which  even  Jacob  Grimm,  for  all  his  "  combining  "  powers, 
refused  to  join,  —  this  mania  for  the  direct  interpreting  of 
myths  has  had  its  day  and  ceased  to  be.  The  end  came  with 
the  estabhshment  of  two  facts,  one  negative  and  one  positive. 
Anthropology,  ethnology,  a  close  study  of  the  history  of  cul- 
ture, of  social  institutions,  of  reUgion,  led  to  the  sound 
conclusion  that  whatever  else  it  might  be,  the  mythology  of 
early  man  was  not  conterminous  with  the  religion  of  early 
man ;  ^  for  religion  in  those  stages  is  chiefly  a  matter  of  cere- 
mony and  ritual  forms.  Suppose  a  person  ignorant  of  the 
rites  of  the  Roman  church  undertaking  to  get  a  notion  of  its 
ceremonies,  and  of  the  heart  of  its  faith,  by  a  study  of  the 
Legettda  Anrea,  or  any  such  body  of  tales!  That  was  the 
negative  fact ;  the  myth  is  not  primitive  religion,  and  is  rarely 
primitive  creed.  Again,  anthropology,  notably  through  its 
great  exponent  Professor  Tylor,  established  the  positive  fact 
that  myths  are  due  to  a  kind  of  poetic  faculty  in  primitive 
man,  the  habit  of  animating,  or,  in  modern  phrase  not  quite 

^  A  dozen  years  ago  or  more,  a  professor  lecturing  on  this  subject  in  a  German 
university,  after  giving  all  the  myths  about  a  certain  goddess,  spoke  somewhat  as 
follows:  "Gentlemen,  this  goddess  is  either  a  star  or  the  early  summer  grass,  I 
am  not  certain  which.  I  am  studying  the  matter  carefully,  and  hope  soon  to 
reach  a  positive  conclusion." 

■^  Compare  Lucretius,  dealing  now  lovingly  with  the  Venus  of  myth  —  alma 
Venus,  the  beloved  of  Rome's  own  god  —  and  now,  a  few  lines  below,  scornfully, 
passionately,  with  the  cruel  rites  of  the  worship  of  Diana  and  the  sacrifice  of 
Iphigenia  at  her  shrine  :  "  ilia  Religio,"  he  says,  with  a  touch  almost  of  blasphemy. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      437 

accurate  for  early  stages  of  culture,  of  personifying  what 
went  on  about  him.^  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  while  following 
Professor  Tylor  in  principle,  has  made  room  for  the  obscene, 
the  brutal,  the  silly,  which  can  be  found  so  plentifully  in  sav- 
age myth  and  sporadically  in  the  myths  which  we  call  classi- 
cal. To  these  ways  of  thinking  came  the  sturdy  Mlillenhoff, 
and  after  him,  Mannhardt,  an  avowed  student  of  customs  and 
popular  thought ;  with  Mannhardt's  later  work,  myth-guess- 
ing, in  which  he  had  once  been  as  wild  as  any ,2  came  to  an 
end.  It  is  now  conceded  that  the  source  as  well  as  the 
meaning  of  most  myths  is  veiled  in  the  obscurity  of  early 
animistic  processes,  while  their  later  development  belongs  to 
the  poet  altogether.  "I  have  learned,"  wrote  Mannhardt^ 
to  Mlillenhoff,  "  to  value  poetical  and  literary  production  as  an 
essential  factor  in  the  formation  of  mythology."  Indeed,  it 
is  not  considering  too  curiously  when  Burckhardt  ^  declares 
that  the  renaissance  in  Italy  so  thoroughly  revived  the  gods 
of  old  pagan  belief,  that  poets  made  new  myths  in  the  ancient 
spirit. 

It  is  a  great  mistake,  however,  to  infer  with  certain  bold 
followers  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  —  the  German  Lippert,  for 
example  —  that  myths  have  nothing  to  do  with  primitive 
religion  and  belong  altogether  to  the  poetic  or  fantastic  in- 
stinct. True,  myths  of  the  classic  kind,  barring  the  names 
of  god  and  goddess,  were  pretty  well  divorced  from  faith ; 
but  Homer  and  Hesiod  told  tales  unknown  to  the  primi- 
tive worshipper  of  Greece,  and  he  had  myths  of    his  own. 

1  See  the  chapters  on  animism  and  mythology  in  Tylor's  Primitive  Culture. 
A.  W.  Schlegel  was  on  this  trail,  but  let  himself  be  befogged  by  Schelling's 
philosophy.     See  the  Vorlesungen,  I.  329,  337. 

2  See  his  Gertnanische  Mythen. 

^  Mythologische  Forschungen  (^Quellen  u.  Forschiaigeti,  No.  51,  Strassburg, 
1884),  Vorrede,  p.  xxv;  the  lesson  came  from  Tylor's  book  which  Miillenhoff  had 
set  Mannhardt  reading.  This  letter  was  written  in  1876.  See  also  MiilJenhoff's 
own  definition  of  mythology  in  his  Deutsche  Alter thumskunde,  V.  i,  157. 

♦  Cultur  d.  Ren.  in  Ital.,  I.  288. 


438  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Schwartz,  a  valiant  guesser,  but  rational  on  certain  lines, 
pointed  out  forty  years  ago^  that  perspective  must  be  ob- 
served, and  that  the  origin  of  a  myth  must  be  held  apart  from 
its  development ;  often,  indeed,  by  a  hint  here  and  a  survival 
there,  one  can  feel  one's  way  back  from  the  graceful,  celestial 
romance  to  a  rude  myth  with  all  the  awe  of  belief  upon  it. 
It  may  be  said  with  confidence  that  early  myth  excluded 
mere  tales  of  nature,  drama  of  the  shifting  seasons,  the  flash 
of  sunHght  on  the  waves,  and  all  the  romance  of  blushing 
dawns  and  shepherded  or  wandering  stars ;  these  tales  of 
later  origin  belonged  to  the  poet  and  his  fantasy.  Early 
man  did  not  go  about  commercing  with  the  skies,  nor  did  any 
spur  of  occasion  put  him  upon  the  telling  of  a  natural  process, 
duly  observed,  in  terms  of  a  human  history  proportioned  and 
duly  recorded.  That  is  a  definite  poetical  or  allegorical 
process,  and  means  that  the  mind  has  a  clear  idea  of  two 
separate  systems,  and  can  hold  apart  the  world  of  fancy  and 
the  world  of  fact,  welding  them  together  in  conscious  pur- 
pose. It  is  poetry,^  not  primitive  myth,  which  sees  the 
heavens  as  the  psalmist  saw  them  :  in  them  hath  he  set  a  tab- 
ernacle for  the  sun,  which  is  as  a  bridegroom  coming  out  of  his 
chamber,  and  rejoiceth  as  a  strong  man  to  rim  a  race.  Myth, 
indeed,  may  now  and  then  lie  at  the  heart  of  such  poetical 
achievement ;  but  that  elementary  myth,  the  work  of  uncon- 
scious animism,  is  rude  and  shapeless  by  comparison  with 
this  finer  stuff.  Primitive  myth  is  a  block  of  marble  with 
more  or  less  resemblance  to  some  creature,  a  kind  of  fetish ; 
poets  come  and  carve  it  into  definite  shape,  individualize, 
idealize,  polish ;  next  is  formed  the  group,  the  celestial  ro- 
mance, figures  as  on  the  frieze  of  a  temple,  with  the  loves 
and  the  quarrels  of  the  gods  ;  and  then,  last  stage  of  all,  alle- 

J  Zdhchrift  f.  Gymnasialwesen,  Berlin,  Nov.,  l86i,  p.  837. 

"^  Mr.  Tylor  lets  animism  of  this  sort  have  too  free  a  play  among  quite  primitiye 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      439 

gorical  and  satirical  poets,  a  Lucian,  a  singer  like  him  of  the 
Norse  Lokasenna,  make  free  with  those  fragments  of  myth 
where  no  awe  of  belief  can  linger  and  hardly  even  the  vital 
grace  of  imagination.  In  all  this  coil  but  one  stage  has  inter- 
est for  us  ;  what  can  be  said  of  the  beginnings  of  poetry  in 
their  relation  to  the  beginnings  of  myth  ? 

A  good  test  for  the  primitive  stage  of  myth  is  first  the 
necessity,  not  the  possibility  of  it,  and  secondly,  the  uncon- 
scious character  of  the  animating  process.  Dawn,  starlight, 
and  laughing  waters  put  no  stress  of  questioning  upon  early 
man ;  but  the  bolt  from  a  stormcloud  which  laid  low  the 
sheltering  tree,  or  struck  down  members  of  the  horde,  a 
nameless  Terror  bursting  out  of  the  unknown,  came  in  more 
questionable  shape,  and  must  have  found  expression  in  those 
statements  which  a  communal  chorus,  as  was  seen  in  the  case 
of  the  Botocudos,  is  fain  to  make  about  the  fate  and  doings 
of  the  horde  itself.  Mere  ancestor-worship  is  not  enough  to 
explain  such  a  case ;  ^  every  analogy  of  human  action  fails  in 
the  presence  of  this  flash  and  roar  and  destruction ;  the 
unknown  was  there,  as  with  modern  phrase —  "  it  "  thunders^ 
—  and  the  statement,  repeated  in  indefinite  chorus,  had  in  it 
the  awe  and  fear  and  yearning  about  the  unknown  which  still 
go  a  long  way  to  make  up  the  idea  of  religion.     But  it  was 

1  Too  much  stress  is  laid  by  some  writers  on  primitive  studies  of  death,  and  of 
dreams  about  the  dead,  as  productive  of  myth.  Modern  peasants,  Hke  savages, 
often  show  a  heavy  and  stupid  indifference  in  the  presence  of  death;  and  its 
problem,  though  it  doubtless  suggested  a  cult  of  spirits,  was  far  less  insistent  with 
early  man  than  the  problem  of  life.  Before  he  thus  worked  out  a  world  of  dead 
spirits,  he  knew  by  instinctive,  really  unconscious  inference,  a  world  of  living 
spirits,  not  of  his  own  breed,  but  vaster,  subtler,  in  those  operations  of  nature 
which  struck  into  his  actual  life,  interfered  with  it,  or  conspicuously  helped  it. 

2  "It  hurts  me;  it  makes  me  cry,"  says  the  child,  pointing  to  the  seat  of 
affliction;  this  "it"  corresponds  with  savage  and  primitive  animism.  It  is  not 
personification,  as  one  is  often  told.  Human  beings  do  not  crawl  into  other 
human  beings  and  hurt  them;  not  he  or  she,  but  "it"  hurts.  One  remembers 
the  remark  of  J.  Grimm,  that  the  neuter  gender  means  not  lack  of  sex,  but  the 
undeveloped,  initial  stage.     Deutsche  Grammatik,  III.  315. 


440  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

unconscious,  this  process  of  animism  ;  before  one  consciously 
attributes  personality  to  a  force  of  nature,  one  must  have  the 
two  distinct  ideas  before  the  mind,  and  for  early  man  such  a 
clear  view  was  out  of  the  question.  Moreover,  the  idea  of  a 
definite  force,  a  definite  personality,  hardly  belongs  to  the 
primitive  stage  of  myth ;  one  must  look  at  environment  ^  and 
the  social  organization.  It  is  known  that  even  the  sacred 
bull,  and  still  more  the  "  father  "  of  the  spirits,  the  chief  god, 
reflect  nomadic  life  under  a  leader  ;  while  the  leaderless  horde 
is  girt  about  with  a  horde  of  spirits,  the  "  they  "  of  primitive 
worship  corresponding  to  the  "  we "  of  the  social  group.'^ 
In  this  stage  of  culture  only  the  horde  itself,  the  social 
group,  can  be  in  the  case ;  poetic  fancy  on  one  side,  ordered 
bands  of  deities,  high  and  low,  with  a  supreme  god  over  all,  on 
the  other  side,  must  be  excluded.  Earliest  myth  is  simply 
communal  emotion,  in  choral  statement,  provoked  by  some 
overwhelming  act  of  vague  and  unseen  powers.  Early  poetry 
is  always  "occasional";  what  strikes,  like  this  thunderbolt, 
into  the  Hfe  of  the  horde,^  is  a  theme  quite  as  solicitous  as 
good  hunting,  or  the  fight  with  rival  clans,  to  fill  a  refrain 
with  repeated  statement  of  fact,  and,  in  time,  to  tempt  the 
improvising  soloist  into  a  phrase  of  wonder,  awe,  pity,  propi- 
tiation. Here,  then,  is  a  common  ground  for  the  beginnings 
of  poetry  and  the  beginnings  of  myth,^  —  in  communal,  cho- 
ral statement.  True,  explanation  of  these  doings  of  nature 
may  be  a  fertile  source  of    myth    in  the  later  period  when 

1  Posnett,  Comparative  Literature,  pp.  162  ff.  The  idea,  however,  is  by  no 
means  as  new  as  Posnett  thinks  it  to  be. 

2  See  above,  p.  380. 

8  Vignoli,  in  his  Myth  and  Science,  notes  that  a  dog  growls  or  bites  at  a  stick 
thrust  toward  him,  a  kind  of  animism;  aUhough  as  Spencer  said,  —  with  quite  un- 
warrantable inference  in  the  denial  of  nature-myths  among  primitive  men,  —  a  dog 
takes  no  notice  of  ordinary  natural  doings,  swaying  boughs,  sunrise,  and  all  the  rest. 

*  Max  Miiller's  "disease  of  language  "  as  source  of  myth  is  absurd;  the  myth 
does  not  wait  for  the  misunderstanding  of  a  metaphor,  but  begins  with  the  meta- 
phor and  lives  with  its  life,  — both  being,  of  course,  unconscious  at  the  start. 


THE    EARLIEST    DIFFERENTIATIONS    OF    POETRY      441 

poetry  and  science  are  allied  in  a  search  after  causes ;  but  it 
is  clear  that  stating  a  fact  is  a  process  anterior  to  any  expla- 
nation of  a  fact.  Is  there  not  for  modern  man  himself  a  com- 
fort in  the  lucid  statement  of  things  even  before  the  things 
are  explained  ?  The  lawyer  who  states  his  case  clearly  has 
half  explained  it  and  has  prepared  the  jury  to  accept  his  expla- 
nation of  the  facts.  Scherer  says  that  myth  is  due  to  some 
primitive  genius  who  listened  to  a  thunderstorm,  wished  to 
explain  it,  and  conjectured  that  "the  gods  were  fighting,"  ^  a 
theory  adopted  by  the  fellow-citizens  of  this  genius,  who  thus 
had  "  founded  "  a  myth.  But  communal  statement,  with  un- 
conscious animism  in  the  terms  of  it,  —  communal,  that  is,  in 
its  expression,  and  religious  in  its  source,  —  is  the  only  for- 
mula for  early  myth  which  will  agree  with  the  conditions  of 
primitive  life.  To  the  cadence  of  the  dance,  in  iterated 
refrain,  the  horde  as  a  social  group  took  comfort  in  getting 
the  facts  into  a  coherent  statement ;  to  repeat,  in  a  rhythm 
which  made  repetition  easy  and  coherence  possible,  that  the 
"  they  "  in  question  had  done  things  which  the  "  we  "  were 
now  recording,  was  a  process  not  far  removed  from  the  iter- 
ated statement  that  "  we  "  had  found  a  good  hunt,  made  a 
good  catch,  or  what  not.  From  the  awful  and  inevitable,  this 
communal  choral  statement  could  pass  to  less  destructive 
doings ;  and  from  the  pandemonium,  the  rout  of  spirits,  step 
by  step  with  differentiation  of  the  horde,  with  the  rise  of 
tribal  leaders,  with  the  coming  of  an  improvising  singer,  this 
statement  could  pass  to  the  pantheon  ^  and  hierarchy  of  gods. 
That  myths  of  this  sort,  statements  based  on  the  feeling 
for  animated   nature  in   its   more  obtrusive   forms,  were   as 

1  A  child  who  saw  a  flash  of  lightning  once  said,  "  God  is  winking  at  me  ";  and 
the  phrase  was  seized  upon  as  a  fine  illustration  of  primitive  myth-making.  But 
the  child  had  been  presented,  by  the  whole  process  of  human  culture  and  thought, 
with  at  least  two-thirds  of  this  "myth,"  —  the  idea  of  God,  of  a  distinct,  supreme 
personality,  and  the  reference  to  God  of  whatever  goes  on  in  the  sky. 

2  See  E.  H.  Meyer,  Indogerm.  Mythen,  Berhn,  1883,  I.  87. 


442  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

early  as  the  worship  of  ancestral  spirits,  is  denied  by  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  and  his  school,  but  without  good  cause. 
It  is  illogical  to  affirm  the  beginnings  of  reason  and  in  the 
same  breath  to  deny  the  beginnings  of  fancy.  If  ancestor- 
worship,  belief  in  "them,"  was  one  of  the  earliest  inferences 
of  the  human  mind,  if  one  of  the  first  conclusions  which  man 
made  outside  the  round  of  his  daily  struggle  for  food  and 
safety  was  to  animate  an  unseen  world,  as  early  an  act, 
earlier  indeed,  was  to  animate  the  world  he  saw.  State- 
ments about  the  doings  of  an  animated  nature,  a  horde  of 
echoes,  movements,  violent  activities,  girdling  the  horde  of 
men,  were  thus  in  all  probability  the  earliest  form  of  myth. 
This  statement,  however,  had  less  of  that  scientific  leaning 
than  Scherer  would  make  one  believe ;  childish  fear  of  harm 
and  childish  hope  of  gain  is  a  more  Hkely  attitude  of  mind 
in  primitive  folk  than  childish  curiosity  about  causes. 
The  choral  statement,  one  may  assume,  took  most  easily  a 
reference  to  human  needs  and  so  became  a  hymn.  The 
hymn  is  essentially  choral,  and  even  under  literary  condi- 
tions implies  a  congregation ;  the  majesty  and  power  of  a 
real  hymn  like  Luther's  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  merit 
as  a  poem.  It  is  the  source  of  the  hymn  in  a  communal 
emotion,  and  the  direction  of  it  to  unseen  forces,  that  give  it 
this  majesty ;  and  the  poorest  words  gain  might  from  these 
conditions  alone.  A  rude  hymn  of  the  horde  to  those  spirits 
unseen  but  felt,  was  therefore  the  probable  beginning  of 
myth,  —  not  a  performance  of  the  shaman  before  a  passive 
throng,  and  not  a  tale  of  celestial  doings  invented  by  some 
early  genius  who  took  it  upon  him  to  pry  into  the  mystery 
of  things.  Of  course  there  are  fetish  myths  which  have 
come  to  be  brutal  and  obscene,  but  were  not  brutal  and 
obscene  when  they  were  first  formed  ;  ^  there  are  also  myths 

^  In  the  reaction  from  ideas  of  a  golden  age  one  must  not  go  too  far,  and  "call 
names  "  which  now  mean  vice,  degeneration,  rottenness.     It  is  possible  that  even 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      443 

invented  in  a  later  stage  of  culture  to  account  for  a  ritual 
or  a  belief  ^  come  down  from  early  and  obscure  origins, 
often  with  something  of  the  fetish  in  them,  as  is  probably 
the  case  with  the  myth  of  Rome  and  the  wolf ;  and  there 
are  crude  tales,  due  to  as  crude  scientific  instinct,  to  account 
for  physical  phenomena,  popular  everywhere  and  in  all  times 
down  to  the  day  of  Uncle  Remus.  But  all  evidence  of 
ethnology,  all  the  facts  which  have  served  to  trace  the  line 
of  poetical  evolution,  go  to  make  probable  the  social  and 
communal  and  choral  beginnings  of  the  myth  which  has 
the  awe  of  belief  upon  it.  As  might  be  expected,  fragments 
of  this  old  choral  refrain  which  bound  the  myth  to  the  com- 
munity and  to  its  religious  emotion,  have  come  down  to  us 
embedded  in  later  and  poetical  myth ;  and  it  has  been  shown 
that  a  refrain  of  grief  ^  for  the  loss  or  departure  of  a  god, 
demigod,  hero,  has  often  been  made  a  proper  name  and  the 
nucleus  for  a  new  myth.  This  choral  cry  of  the  horde  has 
great  interest  for  the  student  of  myths  ;  and  if  the  etymol- 
ogy be  probable  which  makes  the  word  "god"  mean  "one 
that  is  called  upon,"  here  is  more  beckoning  that  way. 
Heavier  stress  should  be  laid  upon  the  choral  hymn  as 
expression  of  emotion  from  a  homogeneous  horde  of  men 
toward  a  homogeneous  horde  of  spirits,  and  upon  the  dance 
and  symbolic  action  which  went  with  the  song,  taking  in 
time  now  a  ritual  and  now  a  dramatic  guise/^  In  other 
words,  this    choral    hymn,   danced    and   sung, —  if    one  will, 

earliest  myth  touched  here  and  there  a  chord  of  poetry  as  we  now  know  poetry, 
and  appealed  to  that  constant  element  which  belongs  to  our  humanity  and  not  to 
our  history. 

^  Or,  of  course,  a  tradition;  so  Prometheus  and  the  origin  of  fire  may  account 
for  the  stealing  of  fire  from  some  neighbouring  tribe.  See  Gruppe,  Griechische 
Culte  und  Mythen,  p.  206. 

2  See  above,  p.  236. 

3  Comparetti,  Kalewala,  pp.  154  f.,  in  his  excellent  remarks  on  popular  myth 
and  popular  poetry,  has  left  his  analysis  incomplete  by  leaving  throng-poetry  quite 
out  of  the  account. 


444 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 


danced  and  sung  about  some  symbol  of  animated  and  super- 
human but  by  no  means  individualized  or  "  personified " 
powers,  and  with  accompaniment  of  sacrifice,  with  festal 
recapitulation,  even,  of  action  inspired  by  the  help  of  these 
powers,  —  was  on  one  hand  the  source  of  religious  ceremony, 
which  later,  in  its  mutilated  and  incomprehensible  refrains 
held  so  stubbornly  in  festal  worship,  with  the  worshipped 
powers  hovering  about  unseen,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  source 
of  a  secular  drama,  where,  as  in  Greece,  only  an  altar  remained 
as  visible  hint  of  sacred  origins,  and  only  the  intervention 
of  gods  and  the  abiding  sense  of  fate  kept  alive  the  old 
purpose  of  the  hymn.  This  chorus,  dealing  with  the  doings 
of  spirits,  like  the  chorus  that  dealt  with  labour  and  hunt  and 
communal  experience  at  large,  was  also  the  beginning  of  myths 
which,  like  the  older  refrain,  fell  under  the  power  of  improvi- 
sation and  so  passed  into  poetic  control,  keeping  pace  with 
the  tribal  development  of  hero,  chieftain,  conqueror,  king, 
blending  with  legend,  and  at  last  finding  record  in  the  epos. 
The  impression  of  natural  forces  upon  man,  and  the  re- 
actionary process  which  imposes  man's  imagination  upon 
natural  forces,  have  another  side ;  they  make  up  not  only  the 
material  of  poetry,  but  also  its  manner,  its  style.  The  sec- 
ond process,  when  it  animated  nature  with  something  like 
human  will,  human  passion,  human  fate,  and  while  it  did  this 
with  the  awe  of  behef  upon  it,  has  been  seen  to  pass  into 
myth.  Roughly  speaking,  one  may  say  that  the  early  and 
unconscious  process  is  myth,  and  the  later,  conscious  pro- 
cess, when  directed  not  to  a  statement  or  story  but  only  to 
a  word  or  phrase,  is  the  figure  or  trope  of  personification. 
The  first  process,  however,  where  human  life  is  treated  in 
terms  of  nature,  is  conveniently  known  as  metaphor,  although 
precision  in  the  use  of  these  terms  is  not  so  much  observed 
as  desired ;  and  metaphor,  too,  must  be  regarded  as  first  an 
unconscious  and  then  a  conscious  process. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      445 

Myth  and  personification  need  no  further  comment,  and 
we  shall  now  consider  the  metaphor  as  mainstay  of  poetical 
style ;  one  word,  however,  may  be  in  place  for  an  early  and 
unconscious  form  of  personification,  which  deals  with  lan- 
guage rather  than  with  fact,  and  so  must  be  sundered  from 
myth  —  the  grammatical  gender  of  words. ^  A  bit  of  myth  may 
lie,  of  course,  in  those  expressions  which  hover  between  the 
natural  and  the  grammatical  gender,  and  is  not  always  easy 
to  explain  from  the  primitive  point  of  view,  however  appro- 
priate the  choice  may  seem  to  a  modern  mind ;  why  is  the 
sun  feminine  in  all  Germanic  languages,  and  the  moon  mas- 
culine ?  Day  is  masculine,  night  is  feminine  ;  earth  seems 
always  feminine,  and  "  mother  "  is  no  new  epithet  for  her. 
Death,  pestilence,  sickness,  have  personifications  that  are 
more  than  gender  ;  Servians  think  of  the  plague  as  a  woman 
in  white  who  steals  upon  her  victims,  and  to  modern  Greeks 
sickness  is  also  a  woman,  blind  and  old,  who  feels  her  way 
from  house  to  house.^  But  even  now  the  process  may  be 
unconscious,  as  one  observes  in  languages  like  English, 
which  have  lost  their  inflections  and  can  give  gender  only 
by  pronouns ;  Grimm's  elaborate  categories  for  the  three 
genders  are  sadly  baffled  by  the  habit  which  calls  a  ship  a 
"  man-of-war  "  and  bids  the  bystander  watch  "  her  "  sail  by.^ 
Again,  there  is  transfer  to  reckon  with  ;  the  first  name  for 
an  object,  as  will  be  shown  presently  to  be  the  case  with 
metaphors,  yields  later  to  a  name  more  precise ;  and  when 
a  ship,  or  the  like,  is  in  question,  motion  and  seeming  life 

^  Grimm's  chapter  on  gender  in  the  third  volume  of  his  Grammar  remains  the 
masterpiece  of  investigation  in  this  subject;  but  his  theory  has  been  attacked  by 
Brugmann.  See,  too,  President  Wheeler,  "  Origin  of  Grammatical  Gender," 
Journal  Germanic  Philology,  II.  528  ff.  Grimm  defines  gender,  III.  346, 
"  eine  in  der  phantasie  der  menschlichen  Sprache  entsprungene  ausdehnung  des 
natiirlichen  auf  alle  und  jede  gegenstande." 

2  Ibid.,  III.  354. 

^  Grimm  says  the  Englishman  calls  "  she  "  whatever  is  dear  to  him  —  the  sailor 
his  ship,  the  miller  his  mill;  III.  546. 


446  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

could  give  one  vague  name,  while  later  and  nearer  acquaint- 
ance found  an  appellation  in  technical  qualities.  On  the 
whole,  it  will  be  best  if  we  leave  gender  to  animism,  to  incipi- 
ent myth,  unconscious  metaphor,  and  whatever  other  forces 
went  to  the  making  of  words,  and  turn  to  metaphor  itself. 

To  those  who  hold  with  the  Abbe  Dubos  ^  that  poetic 
style  is  the  most  important  factor  in  differencing  poetry 
from  prose,  and  demands  the  greatest  genius  in  the  poet, 
it  may  seem  a  hard  saying  to  call  the  early  stage  of  figura- 
tive language  unconscious  metaphor.  The  habit  of  describ- 
ing primitive  poetry  in  terms  of  modern  verse  imposes  on 
these  early  stages  a  teleological  element  quite  foreign  to 
the  conditions  which  ethnology  and  the  sense  of  evolution 
compel  one  to  assume  for  the  beginnings  of  such  an  art. 
Poetry,  says  Cardinal  Newman,  in  his  little  essay,^  has  to 
adopt  metaphorical  language  as  "  the  only  poor  means  allowed 
for  irnparting  to  others  its  intense  feelings,"  which  refuse 
"  the  feebleness  of  ordinary  words " ;  and  with  this  7'aison 
d'etre  for  the  metaphor,  one  goes  on  to  inquire  how  it  is  made. 
The  transfer  from  a  literal  to  a  figurative  or  metaphorical 
expression,  one  finds,  is  made  on  the  basis  of  a  comparison 
and  an  observed  resemblance,  so  that  a  metaphor  is  com- 
pressed or  abridged  simile,  and  the  simile  must  be  the  funda- 
mental figure  in  poetry.  So  the  schools  have  taught  time 
out  of  mind.^     Even  Scherer,*  eager   to   hit   the  new  note, 

1  Reflexions  Critiques,  ed.  1770,  I.  298.  La  Poesie  du  style  fait  la  plus  grande 
difference  qui  soit  entre  les  vers  et  la  prose.  .  .  .  Les  images  et  les  figures  doivent 
etre  encore  plus  frequentes  dans  la  plupart  des  genres  de  la  Poesie,  que  dans  les 
discours  oratoires.  .  .  .  C'est  done  la  Poesie  du  style  qui  fait  le  Poete,  plutot  que 
la  rime  et  la  cesure.  .  .  .  Cette  Partie  de  la  Poesie  la  plus  importante."  See 
also  p,  312,  in  §  xxxv. 

"^  Essay  on  Poetry  with  Reference  to  Aristotle's  Poetics,  ed.  Cook,  p.  1 1. 

'  Some  representative  definitions  of  this  sort  are  collected  and  quoted  by  Dr. 
Gertrude  Buck  in  an  interesting  paper,  The  Metaphor :  a  Study  on  the  Psychology 
of  Rhetoric,  being  No.  5  of  the  "  Contributions  to  Rhetorical  Theory,"  edited  by 
Professor  Scott,  Ann  Arbor,  —  no  date,  but  about  1899,  —  p.  40. 

*  Poetik,  p.  87  f.  See  also  p.  83.  On  p.  262  he  opens,  however,  a  dangerous 
door  for  the  interests  of  this  theory. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      447 

and  fixing  his  gaze  on  primitive  conditions,  is  sure  that 
poetical  figures  spring  from  the  innate  love  of  comparison ; 
even  Dr.  R.  M.  Meyer,^  studying  old  Germanic  poetry,  finds 
that  its  metaphors  prove  the  fundamental  character  of  the 
simile  from  which  they  spring.^  A  little  reflection,  however, 
ought  to  convince  candid  minds  that  in  the  chronological, 
if  not  in  the  logical,  order  of  development,  the  metaphor 
comes  first  and  the  simile  is  an  expanded  metaphor ;  this 
is  proved  not  only  by  the  psychological  argument,  but  by 
the  facts  in  the  case.  Those  similes  from  Polynesian  poetry 
given  by  Letourneau^  represent  no  primitive  stage,  and  to 
the  long  comparisons  of  Homer*  no  wise  man  will  now 
appeal  as  examples  of  the  artless  and  natural  in  poetic 
style.  Savages,  like  Mr.  Shandy,  may  dearly  love  a  com- 
parison ;  but  it  is  a  logical  process,  a  kind  of  incipient 
science,  in  any  case  subsequent  to  the  unconscious  stage  of 
metaphors.  For,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  wherever  one  finds 
verse  which  all  tests  of  value  show  to  have  the  primitive 
quality,  similes  and  the  comparative  impulse  in  general  con- 
spicuously fail;  this  is  the  case  with  ballads,^  with  choral  and 
refrain  of  communal  origins  everywhere,  and  with  the  ruder 
stages  of  our  old  Germanic  poetry.^  Anglo-Saxon  poetry, 
though  all  its  artistic  and  literary  influences  urged  it  to 
comparison,  simile,  allegory,  —  the  latter  a  peculiarly  Chris- 

^  Altgermanische  Poesie,  p.  20. 

2  Modern  writers  on  aesthetics  make  the  same  error :  so  Biese,  "  Das  Meta- 
phorische  in  der  dichterischen  Phantasie,"  Zst.  f.  vgl.  Lit.,  N,  F.  II.  320,  makes 
the  primitive  process  from  simile  to  metaphor. 

^  On  pp.  90  ff. 

*  St.  Evremond  thinks  them  distracting;  in  any  case  he  will  banish  such  things 
from  drariia.  CEuvres  Meslees,  London,  Tonson,  1709,  III.  72  f.,  in  an  essay,  "  Sur 
les  poemes  des  Anciens." 

^  See  above,  p.  190. 

^  It  is  the  case  with  later  reaches  of  poetry.  Chaucer,  for  example,  oflfers  very 
few  figures  or  metaphors  as  compared  with  later  poets;  "no  other  author  in  our 
tongue,"  says  Professor  Lounsbury,  Stud.,  III.  441,  "  has  clung  so  persistently  to 
the  language  of  common  life." 


448  THE   BEGINNINGS    OF   POETRY 

tian  invention, — is  absolutely  hostile  to  the  simile  except 
in  passages  copied  almost  slavishly  from  a  literary  source ; 
and  this  consideration  led  the  present  writer  ^  twenty  years 
ago  to  find  ground  for  opposing  the  traditional  doctrine  of 
metaphors  as  founded  in  the  first  instance  upon  an  ob- 
served likeness.  Everybody  grants  that  early  metaphor 
differs  from  late  ;  a  child  calls  the  bird's  nest  a  house,  not 
because  it  compares  the  nest  with  a  house,  but  because  it  has 
the  idea  of  house  and  has  not  the  specific  idea  of  nest ;  and  so 
it  would  and  does  call  the  horse's  stable,  the  rabbit's  burrow, 
what  not,  a  house,  until  wider  knowledge  and  specific  infor- 
mation give  a  distinct  name  for  each.  Then,  and  not  until 
then,  with  two  separate  ideas  before  the  mind,  is  the  meta- 
phor based  upon  a  definite  comparison,  and  the  transfer  a 
conscious  process.  In  other  words,  the  metaphor  was  not 
a  metaphor  at  the  start,  save  in  the  unconscious  force  of  it ; 
so  with  the  early  myth,  where  there  was  no  thought  of  com- 
paring a  force  of  nature  and  a  human  act,  but  simply  an 
effort  to  express  the  force  along  the  only  possible  path,  the 
path  of  animism.  This,  moreover,  is  at  first  nothing  but 
direct  statement.  In  all  primitive  verse,  including  its  sur- 
vival, the  ballad,  it  is  simple  statement,  and  not  metaphor  in 
any  modern  shape,  that  constitutes  the  style.  One  cannot 
express  the  literal  by  the  figurative  until  one  has  got  a  con- 
ception of  literal  and  figurative  as  discrete  things ;  the  first 
stage  of  metaphor,  then,  is  unconscious,  a  confusion,  if  one 
will,  or,  better,  a  flexibility  in  application  of  the  small  stock 
of  words.     In  a  little  article^  on  metaphor  and  poetry,  the 

^  The  Anglo-Saxon  Metaphor,  Halle,  i88i.  The  theory  of  the  metaphor  there 
advanced  was  due  to  the  study  of  poetical  material  alone,  and  had  no  help  from 
psychology.  The  latter,  however,  is  quite  favourable  to  the  theory  of  poetic  evo- 
lution as  stated  in  the  text.  See  the  quotations  from  Taine  and  others  in  the 
essay  of  Dr.  Buck.  The  false  conclusions  of  Heinzel  in  regard  to  simile  and 
metaphor  are  of  little  moment  compared  with  the  general  value  of  the  essay  which 
contains  them:  Ueber  den  Stil  der  altgermanischen  Poesie,  Strassburg,  Q.  F., 
1875,  ^  stimulating  piece  of  work. 

■■*  Modern  Language  Notes,  I.  83. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      449 

writer  proposed  this  sequence  of  development  in  poetical 
figures  :  metaphor  pure  and  simple,  what  has  just  been  called 
the  unconscious  metaphor,  stands  first ;  ^  then  comes  meta- 
phor with  the  literal  peeping  through,  that  is,  where  literal 
and  figurative  are  joined,  but  in  a  separable  fashion,  the 
literal  statement  involving  but  not  expressing  contradiction 
in  its  terms ;  lastly  the  quite  conscious  metaphor,  where 
both  terms  are  expressed,  and  where  the  mind  is  fully  alive 
to  the  gap  between  reality  and  trope,  a  metaphor  which  may 
be  either  the  implied  simile  ("he  is  a  lion")  or  the  stated 
simile  ("  he  is  like  a  lion  ").  Evidently  now,  there  comes  a  stage 
in  poetic  expression  where  that  need  for  freshness  and  force 
sends  the  poet  back  over  this  path ;  the  logical  expression 
of  resemblance  is  too  literal,  and  he  turns  to  the  metaphor 
again,  and  so  justifies  the  standing  definition  of  it  as  a  com- 
pressed or  abridged  simile.  That,  however,  is  not  the  history 
of  its  evolutionary  growth.  ^ 

Turning  to  the  nearer  subject,  we  may  now  ask  how  the 
differentiation  came  about  in  poetic  speech,  and  where  it 
belongs  in  the  beginnings  of  poetry.  It  is  more  than  prob- 
able that  earliest  language  was  social  in  a  sense  now  hard 
to  understand ;  so  tremendous  was  this  step  from  brute 
forms  of  intercourse  to  human  speech  that  it  must  have 
taken  place  under  a  social  pressure  infinitely  removed  from 


1  Logically  Gerber  is  right,  Die  Sprache  ah  R'uftst,  I.  256,  in  putting  interjec- 
tions at  one  end  of  the  linguistic  process  and  metaphor  at  the  other;  but  chrono- 
logically, historically,  genetically,  the  assumption  fails  to  hold. 

2  The  subject  is  too  wide  for  further  treatment,  and  can  be  regarded  here  only 
in  its  relations  to  the  beginnings  of  poetry.  See,  however,  for  the  early  stages  of 
a  metaphor,  J.  Grimm's  essay  on  "  Die  Fiinf  Sinne,"  Kleinere  Schriften,  VII. 
193  ff.;  and  F.  Bechtel,  Ueber  die  Bezeichnungen  der  sinnlichen  Wahrnehmungen 
in  den  indogerm  Sprachen,  Weimar,  1879,  where  he  shows  how  the  idea  of 
"bright"  underlies  so  many  of  our  words,  —  "glad,"  for  instance,  which  even  in 
Anglo-Saxon  meant  "gleaming."  See,  too,  in  this  book  the  confusion,  or  flexi- 
bility, of  words  for  the  "bright"  and  the  "loud,"  seeing  and  hearing;  also  J. 
Grimm,  "  Die  Worter  des  Leuchtens  und  Brennens,"  Kl.  Schr.,  VIII.  263  ff. 

2G 


450  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

conditions  of  what  now  passes  for  "conversation."  As  with 
the  earth  itself,  these  psychical  changes  were  volcanic. 
The  refrain  of  concerted  labour,  upon  which  Biicher  has 
wisely  laid  such  stress,  the  refrain  of  festal  emotion  over  a 
victorious  fight,  the  cadenced  sounds  in  concert  with  consent 
of  individual  energies  alert  for  a  common  cause, — it  was 
under  such  vast  and  unusual  social  pressure  that  the  greatest 
of  social  triumphs  came  about.  Hence  it  may  well  seem 
absurd  to  talk  of  earliest  song  in  words  as  a  "  heightened  " 
or  emotional  speech,  speech  raised  above  the  level  of  ordi- 
nary conversation ;  for  what  needs  could  have  produced 
ordinary  conversation  before  the  wholly  imperative  and 
extraordinary  occasions  which  called  out  the  greatest  re- 
sources of  social  effort .''  It  is  to  be  denied,  therefore,  that 
"  poetic  "  expression  was  hfted  out  of  ordinary  and  conversa- 
tional expression  ;  and  it  may  well  have  been  that  choral 
hymns  with  earliest  statement  of  myth,^  choral  song  with 
earliest  statement  and  gestured  imitation  of  communal  achieve- 
ment, and  choral  refrains  of  labour,  formed  the  beginnings 
of  speech,  which  was  mainly  a  recapitulation  of  action,  and 
therefore  mainly  a  matter  of  verbs.  It  is  conceded  that 
verbs  came  before  substantives,  for  action,  as  in  labour,  is 
easily  paired  with  gesture  and  sound  ;  names  for  things,  the 
substantives,  the  singular  forms  of  the  pronoun,  are  a  dif- 
ferent affair,  and  lend  themselves  more  readily  to  the 
individual  and  to  improvisation.  A  statement  of  action, 
subjective  or  objective,  contemporary  or  reminiscent,  is  easily 
made  by  a  chorus,  whether  of  primitive  men,  or  of  modern 
children  with  their  "  Now  we  go  round  the  mulberry-bush  "  ; 
and  the  statement  as  naturally  repeats  itself  as  refrain  to  the 
dancing  or  whatever  cadenced  motion  is  in  the  case.     This 

1  Allegory,  now  a  huge  projection  of  metaphor  from  the  style  into  the  subject- 
matter,  is  a  consistent  series  of  personifications  not  unlike  the  later  stages  of  myth; 
in  fact,  late  myth  is  allegory. 


THE   EARLIEST   DIFFERENTIATIONS   OF   POETRY      451 

is  the  communal  or  centripetal  impulse.  The  centrifugal, 
indivddual  impulse  lays  hold  of  an  unvaried  repetition  of 
rhythm/  and  evolves  couplet  and  stanza,  with  variations  of 
rime,  assonance,  and  the  Uke ;  laying  hold  of  the  expression 
itself,  and  by  a  parallel  process  applied  to  style  instead  of 
to  form,  this  impulse  leads  to  variation  in  expression,^  to 
something  in  one  verse  very  like  the  corresponding  part  of 
the  preceding  verse,  yet  different.  Step  by  step,  with  the 
aid  of  the  "  Apollinian "  instinct,  metaphor  becomes  con- 
scious of  itself  and  of  its  own  effort ;  it  works  out  a  poetic 
dialect,  which,  contrary  to  the  common  notion,  is  an  increas- 
ing and  not  a  decreasing  factor  in  poetry.  It  begins  with 
flexibility  of  application,  unconscious  of  a  difference,  for  there 
is  no  difference ;  sees  at  last  a  gap  between  itself  and  the 
literal,  which  has  been  formed  by  the  rise  of  a  conversational 
and  "ordinary"  language;  avoids  this  literal,  and  shuns  this 
ordinary,  until  in  absurd  excess  it  reaches  the  scaldic  kenning, 
or  finds  a  pedant^  making  dictionaries  of  metaphors  proper 
for  the  poet  to  use  in  this  or  that  case.  Finally,  it  returns 
upon  itself,  seeking  simplicity,  if  it  can  find  it,  with  a  Words- 
worth, but  still  refusing  to  join  hands  with  the  talk  of  every- 
day life.*  Be  all  this  as  it  may  be,  the  metaphor  of  the  verb 
is  both  older  and  more  communal  than  the  metaphor  of  the 
substantive,  which  better  fits  the  inventor's  case  and  may  well 


^  On  the  tendency  of  rhythm  and  music  to  suggest  images  and  stir  the  powers 
of  language,  see  the  wild  but  interesting  words  of  Nietzsche,  Geburt  d.  Tragodie, 
p.  48. 

2  See  above,  p.  211. 

^  Josua  Poole,  English  Parnassus,  London,  1677,  like  Italians  just  before  him, 
and  like  Vinesauf  and  others  of  earlier  time,  has  an  array  of  kennings  whence 
the  poet  may  pick  and  choose.  Abel,  for  example  (pp.  221  ff.),  you  may  call 
"  death's  first  fruit,"  or  "  death's  handsel."  Then  there  are  "  forms  of  invo- 
cating  Muses"  (p.  630),  followed,  alas,  by  "forms  of  concluding  letters"  —  in 
prose. 

*  "The  language  of  the  age,"  wrote  Gray  to  West,  April,  1742,  "is  neve-  ^^^ 
language  of  poetry." 


452  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

have  been  the  origin  of  the  riddle,^  conceded  to  be  a  very 
ancient  form  of  Hterature.  As  in  the  beginning,  so  even 
now.  The  more  individual,  artistic,  and  subjective  poetry  be- 
comes, the  more  it  tends  to  deal  in  intricate  metaphor,  the 
less  it  has  of  the  simplicity  due  to  statement  of  action  in 
simple  because  communal  phrase;  and  whenever  reactions 
set  in  toward  that  communal  state  of  things,  action  comes 
to  the  front,  intricate  figure  vanishes,  verbs  have  more  to  do, 
substantives  less,  and  adjectives  almost  nothing.^  A  reac- 
tionary movement  of  this  sort  lies  before  us  in  the  verse  of 
Mr.  Kipling. 

^  Kennings  often  read  like  riddles :  so  in  Finnish,  "  contents  of  Wainamoinen's 
milk-bowl,"  —  the  sunshine.  See,  moreover,  Scherer,  Geschichte  d,  deutsch.  Lit., 
pp.  7,  15;   and  R.  M.  Meyer,  Altgerm.  Poesie,  p.  160. 

2  In  this  sketch  of  differentiation  in  poetic  style  only  outlines  are  essayed. 
The  subject  is  uncommonly  attractive,  and  a  book  on  the  history  of  metaphor 
would  be  welcomed  by  all  students  of  style.  Nothing  has  been  said  here  of  sym- 
bolic metaphor  from  animals  and  the  like.  See  Brinkmann's  study  of  "  Thierbilder 
in  der  Sprache,"  Die  Afetaphern,  Bd.  I.  Bonn,  1878.  His  researches  in  German, 
English,  French,  Spanish,  Italian,  Latin,  Greek,  should  be  extended  to  half  civil- 
ized and  savage  conditions,  and  should  take  a  historical  and  genetic  range.  Of 
course,  the  jesthetic  side  of  this  whole  subject  is  treated  in  Gerber's  well  known 
book,  quoted  several  times  on  preceding  pages.  Die  Sprache  ah  Kunst. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  TRIUMPH   OF  THE  ARTIST 

From  this  brief  raid  upon  the  territory  of  poetic  style,  we 
return  to  the  fortunes  of  improvisation  and  its  defeat  at  the 
hands  of  a  more  deUberate  art.^  Among  the  countless  pas- 
sages in  which  the  poet  has  talked  of  his  profession,  not  the 
least  notable  is  that  impromptu  of  De  Musset  in  which  he 
says :  — 

Faire  un  travail  exquis,  plein  de  crainte  et  de  charme, 

Faire  une  perle  d'une  larme, 

Du  poete  ici-bas  voila  la  passion,  — 

that  is,  of  the  poet  whom  one  takes  seriously,  the  artist,  the  soli- 
tary maker  of  things  beautiful.  Quite  different  is  the  idea  of 
the  poet  implied  in  a  pleasant  little  jest  that  passed  between 
De  Musset  and  Sainte-Beuve.  The  critic  had  declared  that  in 
the  majority  of  men  there  is  a  poet  who  dies  young  while  the 
man  himself  survives ;  whereupon  De  Musset  pointed  out 
that  Sainte-Beuve  had  unwittingly  put  his  thought  into  a 
good  Alexandrine,  and  thus  had  helped  to  prove  that  the 
poet  in  the  case  was  not  dead  but  asleep.  Between  this  poet 
who  dies  young  or  slumbers  in  each  of  us,  and  the  artist  in 
verse  who  makes  pearls  out  of  tears,  there  is  now  only  a  fan- 
tastic and  fugitive  connection ;  in  mediaeval  times,  in  rude 
agricultural    communities,    and    under    primitive    conditions, 

1  It  is  noteworthy  that  Aristotle  excludes  improvisation  from  poetry;  and  in 
modern  times  Gerber  (^Die  Sprache  ah  Kunst)  finds  this  rude  kind  of  verse  so 
opposed  to  his  definition  of  poetry  ("die  Kunst  des  Gedankens,"  ibid.,  I.  50; 
"  enthusiasm  plus  deliberation,"  I.  77),  that  he  too  rules  it  out,  and  says  it  belongs 
simply  to  "  the  art  of  language."  It  is  not  well  to  drag  such  a  ball-and-chain  by 
way  of  definition  when  one  is  dealing  with  primitive  poetry. 

453 


454  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

this  slumbering  poet  was  awake  and  active,  and  the  step 
from  his  ranks  to  that  of  artistry  was  of  the  easiest  and 
shortest  kind.  The  story  of  the  poet  is  simple.  Detach- 
ing himself  from  the  throng  in  short  improvisations,  he 
comes  at  last  to  independence,  and  turns  his  active  fellows 
into  a  mute  audience ;  dignity  and  mystery  hedge  him  about, 
his  art  is  touched  with  the  divine,  and  like  his  brother,  the 
priest,  he  mediates  between  men  and  an  imaginative,  spirit- 
ual world,  living,  too,  like  the  priest,  at  the  charges  of  the 
community.  This  was  the  upward  path  ;  another  path  led  the 
minstrel  into  ways  of  disrepute,  where  dignity  and  mystery 
were  unknown,  where  the  songsmith  was  made  a  sturdy  beg- 
gar and  an  outlaw  by  act  of  parliament,  and  where  there  was 
little  comfort  even  in  being  the  singing-man  at  Windsor. 
With  the  upward  path  there  is  no  space  here  to  deal ;  the 
poet  by  divine  right,  moreover,  has  had  chroniclers  enough 
and  to  spare,  and  it  only  remains  to  note  the  later  stages 
through  which  his  communal  brother  passed  on  the  way  to 
what  seems  an  everlasting  silence. 

As  the  chosen  singer  stands  out  single  from  the  throng 
and  the  throng  lapses  passive  into  the  background,  so  the 
poem  which  this  singer  makes  becomes  a  traditional  and 
remembered  affair,  with  epic  movement  and  an  interest 
which  causes  art  and  substance  of  the  song  to  outweigh  any 
mere  expression  of  contemporary  emotion.  This,  indeed, 
lingers  in  the  chorus  or  refrain  of  a  ballad  ;  but  even  the 
choral  impulse  passes  away  as  the  story  and  the  style  of 
the  poem  increase  in  importance,  and  it  disappears  behind  the 
rhapsode,^  who  chants  or  recites    his  verses   to  a   listening 

^  See  above,  p.  215.  There  is  a  lively  if  exaggerated  account  of  the  rhapsode 
in  Blackwell's  Enquiry  into  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Homer,  pp.  104  ff.  Limits 
already  transgressed  forbid  the  author  to  add  any  material  on  the  minstrel  in  his 
relations  to  the  making  of  poetry.  See  a  brief  account,  with  a  few  references,  in 
Old  English  Ballads,  pp.  310  fT.  Further,  see  Piper,  Spiel/nannsdichtting  (Vol.  2 
of  the  Deutiche  National- Litter atiir');    Scherer,   Gesch.  d.  deutsch.  Dichtung  im 


THE  TRIUMPH    OF   THE   ARTIST  455 

crowd.  With  permanent  record,  with  the  making  of  manu- 
script,^ poetic  art  at  its  best  ceases  to  be  a  matter  of  voice 
and  ear ;  two  silent  men,  the  poet  and  his  reader,  communi- 
cate by  means  of  the  written  or  the  printed  page,  itself  the 
result  of  solitary  thought,  and  subject,  at  the  other  end  of 
the  process,  to  the  same  deliberation  and  inference  in  the 
appreciation  of  it  as  the  poet  employed  in  the  making.^  But 
the  obvious  advantages  of  immediate  contact,  of  living  voice, 
gesture,  personal  emotion,  in  the  poet,  and  paljDable  interest, 
whether  active  or  passive,  on  the  part  of  the  audience,  made 
the  disintegration  and  decay  of  this  primitive  group  a  very 
slow  affair.  It  survives  even  yet  in  the  popular  "reading," 
and,  with  higher  pretensions,  on  the  stage ;  but  a  far  more 
interesting  survival,  and  more  complete,  is  found  among  that 
people  of  strong  poetic  impulses  who  gave  the  improvvisatore 
his  place  of  honour  down  to  quite  recent  times.  The  art  was 
so  common  that  it  got  the  compliment  of  parody ;  Pulci  imi- 
tates the  improvvisatori  in  his  Morgante^  and  worse  yet,  the 
luckless  bards  who  made  extemporaneous  verses  at  the  table 
of  Leo  X  were  whipped  if  these  verses  were  not  of  the 
smoothest.  But  this  is  only  the  shady  side  of  the  art. 
Quadrio  *  thinks  that  if  the  human  mind  anywhere  puts  forth 
its  noblest  powers,  it  is  in  that  craft  called  canto  all '  hnprov- 

II  u.  12  Jhrh.  (^Quellen.  u.  Forschungen,  XII.);  Wilmanns,  Walther  v.  d.  VogeU 
iveide,  especially  pp.  39  ff.;  the  general  account  in  Axel  Olrik's  Middelalderens 
Vandretide  Spillemaend  (^Opuscula  Philologicd),  Copenhagen,  1887;  Freymond, 
Jongleurs  und  Menestrels,  Halle,  1883  (for  the  Romance  side  of  the  question); 
and  portions  of  many  other  works,  such  as  Jusserand,  Theatre  en  Angleterre, 
p.  23,  note;  F.  Vogt,  Salman  und  Morolf,  pp.  cxxiii  f.;  notes  here  and  there  on 
Widsith  and  Deor,  the  earliest  types  of  English  minstrel;    and  so  on. 

^  There  were  pedants  before  paper,  however,  in  the  days  of  great  mnemonic 
feats.     See  Max  Muller,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  November,  1899,  pp.  798  ff. 

-  This  evolution  of  the  solitary  and  deliberate  poet  has  been  outlined  in 
Chap.  IV. 

3  Burckhardt,  Ren.,  I.  172.     See  also  p.  250. 

*  Delia  Storia  e  della  Ragione  d'ogni  Poesia,  Vol.  I.,  Bologna,  1739, 
pp.   155  ff. 


456  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

viso;  1  this,  he  says,  was  the  beginning  of  poetry,  and  is  still  one 
of  its  best  achievements ;  and  he  goes  on  to  give  some  hints  for 
the  ambitious.  Every  one  knows  the  romantic  figure  of  Co- 
rinne ;  but  a  better  example  for  the  present  purpose  is  Perfetti, 
an  actual  improvvisatore  whose  feats  drew  attention  abroad  as 
well  as  at  home.  He  is  mentioned  in  ^-^qx^zq!^  Anecdotes ; 
and  a  few  facts  about  him^  may  be  given  here  in  order  to 
show  how  the  fatal  breach  between  poetry  of  mere  entertain- 
ment, now  in  full  process  of  degeneration  at  the  hands  of  the 
minstrel  and  balladmonger,  and  poetry  of  creative  and  imagi- 
native art,  now  veiled  in  mystery  and  seen  of  none  but  con- 
secrated eyes,  was  thought  to  be  healed  by  the  rapt  strains 
of  these  improvising  poets  of  Italy.  What  grace,  they  ar- 
gued, could  be  lacking  to  one  that  was  crowned  at  the  Capi- 
tol, and  stood  in  the  stead  of  Petrarch  ?  Son  of  a  cavalier 
and  a  noble  lady,  Perfetti  began  very  early  his  office  as  a 
bard ;  his  Latin  biographer,  with  vast  gravity,  says  the  child 
made  "  what  in  our  tongue  is  called  rime  "  at  eleven  months ; 
small  wonder  that  he  became  famous  when  still  a  youth,  and 
was  welcomed  at  parties  of  every  sort,  weddings,  social  dis- 
cussions, what  not,  where  he  exercised  his  gift  of  extempo- 


^  "  Tutta  volta  bisogna  ancor  confessare,  che  questo  fu  il  primo  genere  di 
Poesia,  che  fosse  al  Mondo."  There  is  a  long  account  of  improvisation  in  Cre- 
scimbeni,  L'Istoria  della  Volgar  Poesia,  Venice,  1 731  (written  in  1697),  pp.  219  ff. 
An  old  and  very  interesting  gradus  ad  Parnasstim  is  Ruscelli,  Del  Modo  di  Com- 
porre  in  Versi  nella  Lingua  ftaliana,  Venice,  1582  (a  new  edition),  "nel  quale 
va  compreso  un  pieno  ordinatissimo  Rimario,"  and  there  are  directions  for  using 
the  voice  both  for  prose  and  for  verse.  The  seventh  chapter  is  on  the  "  stanze 
d'ottava  Rima,"  and  treats  of  improvisation,  mentioning  even  an  infant  phenome- 
non in  this  art  ("  essendo  ancor  fanciullo  .  .  .  non  arrivava  ai  sedici  anni"),who 
made  verses  off-hand  on  any  subject  which  was  given  to  him. 

^  From  two  books,  one  Italian,  Saggi  di  Poesie  parte  dette  aW  improvviso  e 
parte  scritte  dal  Cavalier e  Perfetti  patrizio  Sanese  ed  insigne  Poeta  estemporaneo 
coronato  di  laurea  in  Campidoglio  .  .  .  dal  Dottor  Domenico  Cianfogni,  2  vols., 
Florence,  1748  (Vol.  II.  has  the  account  of  the  crowning);  and  a  Latin  pamphlet 
of  56  pp.,  Josephi  Mariani  Parthenii  S.  J.  de  Vita  et  Studiis  Bernadini  Perfetti 
Seneiisis  Poetae  I.aureati,  Rome,  1771.     They  are  interesting  in  many  ways. 


THE   TRIUMPH    OF   THE    ARTIST  457 

raneous  song.  Of  a  summer  night  ^  he  would  improvise 
songs  in  praise  of  some  family,  singing  under  their  windows, 
an  amiable  fancy.  Cianfogni  heard  him  on  these  occasions, 
and  says  that  the  poems  were  often  taken  down  in  writing  by 
persons  concealed  from  the  poet's  view ;  but  he  rarely  wrote 
verses  of  his  own,  finding  that  sort  of  composition  by  no  means 
to  his  taste.  He  refused  to  undertake  an  epic,  though  the 
pope  urged  him  thus  to  rival  Tasso  and  Ariosto.  Ottava  rima 
was  his  favourite  verse,  and  he  was  fond  of  a  musical  accom- 
paniment. His  memory,  too,  was  prodigious ;  in  brief,  Cian- 
fogni hopes  that  this  Moses  will  lead  poetry  back  from  its  exile 
in  a  land  of  paper  and  print  to  its  old  glories  of  the  living  voice 
and  the  hearing  of  the  ear.  The  Latin  pamphlet,  which  has 
some  interesting  remarks  on  related  matters  in  poetry,  says 
that  Perfetti  learned  his  art  at  Sienna  from  one  Bindius 
"  poeta  extemporalis,"  who  excelled  in  that  sort  of  v^erse 
which  Berni  composed,  and  which  was  called  from  its 
founder  Bernesque.  Come  to  his  full  powers,  Perfetti  shunned 
no  kind  of  poem,  and  excelled  in  every  branch  of  the  art. 
His  songs  were  repeated  on  all  sides  and  passed  current 
among  the  people ;  while,  for  the  rest,  he  could  sing 
niajora  too,  winning  applause  from  the  pope  himself,  and 
getting  crowned  at  the  Capitol  in  a  function  of  unusual 
splendour.  Physically,  his  poetic  ardour  was  formidable  and 
"  almost  passed  belief,"  eyes  aflame,  brow  contracted,  pant- 
ing bosom,  and  a  flow  of  words  so  vehement  and  swift  that 
his  harp-player  was  often  left  far  in  the  rear  ;  the  song  done, 
Perfetti  could  hardly  stand  for  exhaustion,  and  slept  but 
little  on  the  ensuing  night.^  So  strenuous  a  life  told  on  his 
health,  one  must  think  ;  at  any  rate,  he  died  of  paralysis  in 
July,  1747. 

1  Latin,  xix. 

2  The  pious  father  tells  elsewhere  of  mitigating  contrivances :  "  Frigida  inter 
canendum  uti  solebat,  ad  fauces  nimirum  recreandas  et  ad  nimium  fervorem,  quo 
incendebatur,  restringuendum  I  "  ' 


458  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

This  account  of  Perfetti  is  amusing,  but  much  may  be 
learned  from  it.  Significant  is  the  fact  that  he  always  sang 
his  verses  as  he  composed  them,  kept  to  one  fixed  rhythm, 
and  had  a  harp  to  accompany  him,  —  music  once  more  in  her 
original  function  as  muse.  Significant,  too,  is  his  aversion 
from  pen  and  paper,  his  sensible  refusal  to  try  epic  and 
poems  of  great  length.  That  physical  excitement  and  that 
reaction,  too,  are  in  line  with  the  old  communal  elation,  and 
are  at  no  great  remove  from  similar  states  of  the  body  in 
medicine  men,  magicians,  priests  of  the  oracle,  and  even  the 
rapt  poet  of  a  traditional  prime.  Significant,  finally,  is  the 
feeling  on  the  part  of  his  friends  that  with  him  poetry  was 
going  back  to  first  principles,  and  could  thus  bathe  in  the 
fountain  of  youth.  But  it  was  not  to  be.  The  communal 
fashion  of  poetry  was  already  a  lost  cause.  Soli  cmitare 
periti  Arcades  ;  the  "  poet  in  every  man  "  is  passive  and  not 
active ;  and  the  gift  of  improvisation  comes  now  in  vain,  for 
the  conditions  which  once  gave  it  sole  validity  are  vanished 
beyond  recall.  Shakspere's  kindred  three,  the  lunatic,  the 
lover,  and  the  poet,  once  frankly  accepted  as  public  and  priv- 
ileged characters,  sacred  even,  must  now  play  the  fool  no- 
where but  in  their  own  houses. 


Whatever  it  gained  by  the  process,  poetry  has  been  forced 
to  give  up  its  immediate  power  over  men,  and  to  console  itself 
with  what  Herder  called  a  "  paper  eternity."  This  triumphant 
artist,  who  now  holds  its  destinies  in  trust,  stands  at  such  a 
remove  from  its  beginnings,  his  very  art  seems  so  opposed  to 
rude  songs  of  the  prime,  and  the  public  making  of  verse  ^  has 

1  Along  with  Perfetti's  moribund  art  of  individual  improvisation  dies  as  well 
the  improvised  flyting,  even  in  its  more  complicated  and  artistic  phases.  Through 
sundry  references  made  above  (pp.  208,  note,  325,  416  f.)  in  regard  to  the  inter- 


THE   TRIUMPH    OF   THE   ARTIST  459 

become  so  deject  and  wretched,  that  one  must  face  again, 
and  this  time  in  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter,  a  question 
of  identity.  Is  it  all  one  and  the  same  art?  Has  all  this 
pother  about  refrain  and  rhythm  concerned  the  beginnings 
of  actual  poetry,  or  only  hints  and  forewarnings  as  alien  to 
poetry  itself  as  the  brute  beast  is  alien  to  civilized  man? 
Three  answers  may  be  made  to  this  question.  With  Aris- 
totle, or  rather  with  what  one  takes  to  be  the  meaning  of 
Aristotle,  one  may  sunder  as  into  two  distinct  arts  the  im- 
provisation of  primitive  throngs  and  the  deliberate  poetry 
of  maker  and  seer.  Here,  of  course,  is  a  denial  of  iden- 
tity. Again,  with  Scherer,^  one  may  ignore  improvisation  by 
throngs,  recognize  only  the  difference  between  oral  and  writ- 
ten record,  and  assume  for  earliest  poetry  conditions  analo- 
gous to  those  of  modern  times,  —  the  need  for  entertainment 
on  the  part  of  a  "pubHc,"  and  the  answering  perform- 
ance of  an  "  entertainer  "  who  languishes  or  thrives  accord- 
ing to  the  state  of  the  literary  market.  Here  is  identity 
outright,  but  far  too  much  of  it.  Whatever  the  merits  of  his 
Poetik,  and  it  has  great  merits,  Scherer  was  doomed  to  failure 
from  the  first,  because,  as  Biicher^  rightly  objected,  no  one 

laced  stanzas  of  ballad  and  song,  I  have  come  into  a  bit  of  unintentional  and 
quite  explicable  confusion.  These  serranas  were  called  artificial,  and  yet  were 
cited  in  the  proof  of  communal  origins.  Artistic  and  even  artificial  these  j^r- 
ra«flj  undoubtedly  become;  and  yet  so  does  the  refrain.  They  are  very  common; 
as  Professor  Lang  points  out  in  his  Liederbtuh  des  Konigs  Denis  von  Portugal, 
Halle,  1894,  pp.  xhai,  Ixiii,  they  make  "die  Norm  des  altportugiesischen  Kunst- 
gedichtes,"  and  are  found  alike  in  songs  of  love  and  in  the  various  kinds  of 
flyting.  Here,  in  the  public  song-duel,  one  crosses  into  communal  territory;  and 
the  serranas  go  back  to  that  rivalry  of  variation  based  upon  a  refrain  or  a  repeated 
traditional  verse. 

^  See  above,  p.  349. 

2  I  regret  that  all  references  to  Blicher's  Arbeit  und Rhythmus  have  been  made/ 
from  the  first  edition,  and  not  from  the  second,  which  came  to  my  hands  after 
the  foregoing  chapters  were  printed.     In  bulk  the  book  has  more  than  doubled, 
increase  lying  mainly  in  new  songs  and  refrains  of  labour,  particularly  of  Bittirbeit 
and  Frohnarbeit.     Neither  this  new  edition,  however,  nor  the  new  edition  of 


46o  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

can  arrive  at  the  spirit  of  primitive  art  by  setting  out  from 
the  categories  of  modern  art.  Moreover,  Scherer  flies  in  the 
face  of  facts,  while  the  facts  which  go  with  that  Aristotehan 
theory  are  surprisingly  accurate.  Not  a  syllable  in  Aristotle's 
brief  account  of  poetic  origins  has  been  assailed  by  all  the 
evidence  gathered  for  modern  ethnology,  and  by  all  the  his- 
torical and  comparative  work  undertaken  on  the  basis  of  this 
new  material.  Nevertheless,  one  hesitates  before  the  Aris- 
totehan theory  of  absolute  difference,  just  as  one  hesitates 
before  the  notion  of  absolute  identity.  True,  one  must 
sunder  the  epoch  of  instinct,  of  throngs,  and  of  improvisa- 
tion, from  the  epoch  of  deliberate  and  sohtary  art ;  but  this 
does  not  warrant  one  in  granting  to  the  second  epoch  alone 
the  name  and  fact  of  poetry.  There  is  a  third  answer  to 
the  question,  reasonable  in  every  way,  which  would  neither 
transfer  modern  conditions  to  the  remote  past,  nor  yet  blot 
out  one  of  the  two  periods  of  poetry,  but  would  see  in  all 
manifestations  of  the  art,  early  and  late,  the  presence  and 
play  of  two  forces,  one  overwhelmingly  conspicuous  at  the 
beginning,  the  other  overwhelmingly  conspicuous  now;  forces 
which,  in  their  different  adjustments,  have  conditioned  the 
progress  of  song  and  verse  at  every  stage. 

For  it  is  clear  that  two  forces  ^  have  been  always  active 


Biicher's  Entstehung  der  Volkswirthschaft  (see  my  note  above,  p.  107)  changes 
materially  his  theory  as  quoted  in  defence  of  communal  poetry.  Not  so  much 
the  priority  of  play  is  conceded  as  the  early  lack  of  a  definite  boundary  between 
play  and  work.  Again,  references  have  been  made  above  to  Yrjo  Hirn's  book, 
Forstitdier  till  en  Konsffilosofi  ;  this  material,  and  much  more  of  the  sort,  are  now 
to  be  found  in  the  same  author's  Origins  of  Art,  London  and  New  York,  19CX). 
Possibly  some  modification,  due  to  the  chapter  on  "  Erotic  Art,"  should  be  made 
in  the  statements  of  ethnologists  with  regard  to  the  lack  of  this  motive  in  savage 
poetry. 

^  The  science  of  poetry  has  had  its  share  of  wild  theories  meant  to  establish 
"laws"  of  progress.  See  Tarde,  Les  Lois  Sociales,  pp.  24  ff.  But  the  play  of  col- 
lective and  individual  forces  is  too  evident,  too  reasonable,  to  be  classed  with 
Vice's  Ricorsi  and  with  Plato's  or  Bacon's  cycles. 


THE   TRIUMPH    OF   THE   ARTIST  461 

not  only  in  letters  but  in  human  life,  and  that  these  forces 
answer  to  the  communal  influence  dominant  in  early  poetry 
and  the  centrifugal,  individual  tendency  in  modern  verse. 
One  phase  of  this  dualism  in  poetry  has  been  discussed 
above ;  ^  it  is  now  in  order  to  look  at  it  not  with  separation 
and  analysis  in  view,  but  rather  with  an  eye  to  the  higher 
synthesis.  No  one  questions  the  antithesis  between  man 
solitary  and  man  social ;  and  few  will  question  the  relative 
dominance  of  this  or  that  type  for  any  given  age  of  the 
world.  There  are  times  so  stamped  by  the  individual  im- 
pulse that  all  kinds  of  covenant,  system,  institution,  are 
attacked,  and  nowhere  more  fiercely  than  in  affairs  of  reli- 
gion and  of  state.  Seventeenth-century  England  is  a  case  of 
this  kind  ;  individuals  rush  off  to  the  wilderness  to  think  and 
dream,  and  then  rush  back  again  to  found  a  new  sect.  On 
the  large  stage  the  state  is  Cromwell,  and  on  the  small  stage 
Quakerism  is  George  Fox.  Again,  and  for  the  other  view, 
seventeenth-century  France^  is  a  place  of  order,  tradition, 
and  collective  peace.  True,  names  are  also  current  along 
with  creed  and  rule,  Bossuet,  Boileau,  and  the  great  Louis 
himself ;  but  it  is  dogma  and  order,  not  disintegration,  that 
they  proclaim.  Consent  is  supreme  here,  as  dissent  is  su- 
preme across  the  Channel.  In  any  line  of  human  effort,  and 
at  any  given  time,  one  of  these  forces  is  dominant.  But 
after  all,  it  is  only  of  a  relative  dominance  that  one  can 
speak,  and  these  labels  that  the  historian  puts  upon  his 
entire  epoch  are  good  until  another  historian,  with  another 
phase  of  it  in  mind,  takes  up  the  brush.  There  is  constant 
play  of  those  opposing  forces,  and  if  the  collective  spirit 
brought  order,  tradition,  cohesion,  to  the  late  seventeenth 
and  the  early  eighteenth  century,  the  individual  spirit  even 

1  In  Chapters  III  and  VII. 

2  See  the  brilliant  description  of  this  epoch  in  the  opening  chapter  of  Pellis- 
sier's  Mouvement  Litteraire  au  XIX^  Siecle,  5th  ed.,  Paris,  1898. 


462  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

then  fostered,  as  never  before,  the  idea  of  a  great  man  as 
mainspring  in  social  progress.  So,  too,  if  disintegration  ruled 
in  seventeenth-century  England,  there  was  no  lack  of  the 
collective  and  communal  force ;  witness  the  social  organiza- 
tion and  religious  democracy  of  the  Quakers  themselves.  It 
was  a  time  of  sects  and  schisms ;  it  was  also  a  time  of  com- 
monwealths spiritual,  political,  and  social. 

With  this  constant  play  and  change  of  the  two  forces  in 
mind,  one  may  return  to  poetry  itself  and  attempt  a  sum- 
mary of  the  whole  case,  noting  the  alternation  of  communal 
and  individual  impulses,  and  seeking,  by  a  study  of  their 
manifestations,  to  bring  the  beginning  of  the  art  into  line 
with  its  present  condition.  It  has  been  shown  how  easily 
confusion  besets  a  discussion  of  that  savage  culture  which  is 
now  declared  communal  in  every  way,  and  now  painted  as 
individual  to  the  extreme  of  brute  selfishness.  So,  too,  when 
one  says  that  early  poetry  was  overwhelmingly  choral  and 
communal,  that  modern  poetry  is  overwhelmingly  individual, 
one  has  full  warrant  of  facts ;  but  it  is  well  to  remember  just 
what  these  facts  are,  and  so  avoid  ill-considered  criticism. 
Poetry  was  a  social  creation  and  essentially  communal  at  the 
start ;  although  some  of  the  most  careful  investigations  in  the 
early  history  of  man  ^  are  now  putting  stress  upon  the  fact 
that  for  perhaps  thousands  of  years  humanity  was  hovering 
on  the  far  border  of  communal  organization,  and  led  a  mainly 
selfish  and  unsocial  life.  Man  of  this  period  did  not  have  to 
unite  with  his  fellows  for  purposes  of  mutual  help  and  for 
defence  against  a  common  foe ;  like  many  wild  animals,  he 
could  have  roved  about  in  smallest  groups,  each  member  of 
which  got  its  own  food  for  itself,  often,  as  in  favoured  cli- 
mates, with  a  minimum  of  exertion.  Hence,  too,  for  long 
stretches  of  time,  no  need  of  organized  labour,  of  any  eco- 

1  Notably  Bucher,  Entstehung  der  Volkswirihschaft^  Tubingen,  1898,  "Det 
Urzustand." 


THE   TRIUMPH   OF  THE   ARTIST  463 

nomic  system.  But  these  needs  all  came  at  last ;  ^  and  when 
primitive  man  confronted  them,  he  began  his  social  history, 
and  communal  life  was  a  fact.  Here,  too,  in  these  rude 
communal  beginnings,  consent  and  rhythm  played  their 
parts.  Now  it  is  no  argument  whatever  against  the  assump- 
tion that  earliest  poetry  was  strongly  communal  to  say  that 
earliest  social  man  himself  was  only  feebly  and  tentatively 
communal ;  the  point  is  that  where  he  was  communal  it  was 
to  a  degree  rendered  utterly  impossible  for  the  present,  and 
almost  incredible  for  the  past,  by  reason  of  the  very  social 
progress  in  which  that  communism,  that  consent,  formed  the 
first  step.  So,  too,  when  it  is  said  that  the  individual  ele- 
ment in  primitive  poetic  art  was  at  a  minimum,  there  is  noth- 
ing counter  to  this  assertion  in  the  fact  that  early  man  was 
close  to  the  absolutely  individual  and  centrifugal  state ; 
whenever  the  individual  made  himself  felt  in  poetry,  it  was 
as  an  individual  bound  by  the  new  social  tie,  and  his  individ- 
ual expression  was  a  part  of  the  communal  expression.  But, 
as  was  just  said,  the  new  communal  element,  so  far  as  it 
went,  was  communal  to  an  almost  exclusive  degree ;  not  until 
after  long  ages  of  alternating  collective  and  individual  forces, 
working  within  the  social  union,  was  the  individual  socially 
free  to  make  himself  master  in  a  wholly  social  art.  It  is  a 
fact  full  of  significance  that  the  nearer  social  groups,  Hke  the 
Veddahs  and  the  Botocudos,  stand  to  the  brutish,  unstable, 
isolated,  and  wandering  life  of  earliest  man,  so  much  the 
closer  and  more  emphatic  is  their  tentative  expression  of 
social  consent  in  the  dance,  which  is  almost  a  continuous 
ring  of  humanity,  with  just  two  prominent  characteristics : 
the  tightest  possible  clasp  of  individual  to  individual,  and  the 
most  exact  consent  of  rhythm  in  the  limbs  that  are  free  to 
move.     Yet  when  the  dance  is  past,  and  the  ring  is  broken, 

1  See  Professor  Keasbey,  International  Monthly,  April,  1900:  "The  Institu- 
tion of  Society." 


464  THE    BEGINNINGS    OF    POETRY 

its  individual  members  go  back  to  a  life  marked  by  hardly 
any  social  traits.  As  to  labour,  Biicher  ^  puts  stress  on  the 
priority  of  women  in  gregarious  songs  of  toil ;  while  men 
were  stalking  game,  the  women  combined  in  movements  and 
chorals  of  work,^  and  a  certain  antithesis  is  not  far  to  seek 
which  would  give  women  the  primacy  in  early  stages  of 
poetry,  while  men  lord  it  almost  exclusively  in  these  latter 
days.  No  woman,  with  the  doubtful  exception  of  Sappho, 
has  crossed  the  bounds  of  what  is  known  as  minor  poetry ; 
no  woman,  though  women  sing  and  have  most  need  of  song 
from  the  cradle  to  the  death-bed,  has  been  a  great  composer ; 
no  woman,  not  even  George  Eliot  or  any  of  her  clever 
cousins  in  New  England,  has  yet  laid  hold  of  that  quality 
which  goes  with  triumphs  of  the  individual  poet,  the  quality 
of  humour.  Why  women  were  so  prominent  in  the  com- 
munal poetry  of  the  beginnings,  is  easily  answered  and  is  a 
question  to  be  asked ;  why  women  fail  as  individuals  to  reach 
the  higher  peaks  of  Parnassus,  is  a  question  perhaps  not  to 
be  asked,  although  the  answer  might  well  seem  a  distinct 
recognition  of  woman's  great  services  to  the  art.  At  certain 
stages  of  poetry  women  have  been  nursing  mothers  without 
whose  love  and  zeal  for  song  poetry  would  have  fallen  into 
evil  ways  indeed.  In  any  case,  woman  looms  larger  than 
man  in  that  shadowy  world  of  beginnings ;  her  life  was 
more  consistently  social,  and  her  quicker  emotional  nature, 
whatever  it  may  seem  to  modern  eyes,  gave  her  an  advan- 
tage over  the  more  stolid  and  more  soHtary  male. 

How  is  one  to  bind  these  beginnings  to  the  present  con- 
dition of  poetry .-'  With  that  alternation  of  social,  choral 
impulses  and  impulses  of  the  individual,  poetry  is  not  simply 

1  Arbeit  u.  Rhythmus,  2d  ed.,  p.  340, 

2  In  dances,  of  course,  as  well.  To  references  scattered  through  the  preceding 
pages,  add  Mommsen  on  the  Camenae,  Hist.  Rome,  trans.  Dickson,  2d  ed. 
London,    1864,  I.   240. 


THE    TRIUMPH    OF   THE   ARTIST  465 

swinging  back  and  forth  between  two  positions,  but  makes 
a  steady  advance.  As  in  social  progress,  at  each  fresh  occa- 
sion on  which  the  individual  isolates  himself  from  society, 
he  takes  with  him  the  accumulated  force  that  society,  by 
its  main  function,  has  stored  up  from  traditions  of  the  past, 
and  as  whenever  he  returns  to  society,  he  brings  back  as 
his  own  contribution  a  fresh  strength  derived  from  more  or 
less  unfettered  thinking  over  vital  problems,  so  it  is  with 
communal  and  artistic  forces  in  poetry.  For  the  mere  case 
of  poetry  as  a  body  of  literature,  on  one  hand,  and  the  poet 
as  an  individual  on  the  other  hand,  this  relation  is  plain 
enough,  and  speaks  for  itself.  Poetry  does  even  more  for 
the  poet  than  the  poet  does  for  poetry.  But  when  one 
passes  from  materials  to  conditions  and  elements,  asking 
for  what  is  social  or  communal  in  the  modern  poetry  of  art 
at  its  best,  few  answers,  if  any,  are  to  be  heard.  Some 
answer,  however,  is  demanded,  and  it  must  try  to  rise  to 
the  height  of  so  great  an  argument.  Where,  then,  is  the 
trace  of  direct  communal  elements  in  great  poetry  ? 

The  modern  artist  in  poetry  triumphs  mainly  by  the  music 
of  his  verse  and  by  the  imaginative  power  which  is  realized 
in  his  language,  often  merely  by  the  suggestion  in  his  lan- 
guage; for  poetry,  as  Sainte-Beuve  prettily  remarked,  lies 
not  in  telling  the  story  but  in  making  one  dream  it.  For 
present  purposes,  then,  it  will  be  enough  to  look  at  the 
formal  quality  of  rhythm  and  the  more  creative  quality  of 
imagination.  Assuming  that  the  second  chapter  of  this 
book  proved  what  it  set  out  to  prove,  one  must  see  in 
rhythm,  or  regularity  of  recurrence  due  to  the  consenting 
cadence  of  a  throng,  the  main  representative  of  communal 
forces ;  although  repetition  in  its  other  forms  goes  back  to 
the  very  condition  of  choral  poetry  itself.  Because  the  critics 
take  rhythm  and  verbal  repetition  largely  for  granted  in  the 
work   of  any  great   poet,   and   look  rather  to   his  excellent 


466  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

differences  in  thought  and  in  variation  of  style,   one  must 
not   ignore    the   immense    significance    of    those    communal 
forces  in   the   poetry  of   art.     It  is   not  the  mere  rhythm, 
grateful,  exquisite,  and   powerful   as  that  may  be,  but  it  is 
what  lies  behind  the  rhythm,  that  gives  it  such  a  place  in 
poetry ;  it  appeals  through  the  measures  to  the  cadent  feet, 
and  so  through  the  cadent  feet  to  that  consent  of  sympathy 
which  is  perhaps  the  noblest  thing  in  all  human  life.     The 
triumphs  of  modern  prose  are  great,  but  they  fail  one  and 
all  to  take  the  place  of  rhythmic  utterance ;  they  fail  even 
to  do  at  their  best  what  poetry  often  does  in  its  mediocrity. 
The  short  story  commands  pathos  to  an  almost  intolerable 
degree ;  Balzac's  heartless  daughters  bring  old  Pere  Goriot 
close  to  the  plight  of   Lear,   so  far  as  this  pathos  is  con- 
cerned ;  and  when  Ibsen  wishes  to  touch  the  quick  of  things 
in  a  play,  he  does  well,  from  his  point  of  view,  to  discard 
jingling  verses  and  to  use  the   prose  of   common   conversa- 
tion, thus  bringing  one  face  to  face  with  the  pathos  of  bare 
and  actual  life,  —  very  actual  and  very  bare.     Pathos,  indeed, 
all  these  prose  triumphs  show,  and  pathological  is  the  word 
for  them.     They  belong  to  surgery.     Poetry,  recoiling  from 
bare  and  actual  life,  has  a  very  different  function.     Signifi- 
cant is  the  popular  use  of  this  word,  poetry ;  when  one  says 
that  the  poetry  has  gone  out  of  one's  life,  one  means  that 
something  very  like   Ibsen   has   come   in,   that  one  can  no 
longer  idealize  life  and  can  see  in  it  only  its  flatness  and 
bareness.     The  cadence  of  those  feet  has  ceased,  and  with 
it  the  hint  of  consent  and  sympathy.     For  when  the  Ved- 
dahs  leave  their  solitary  and  often  desperate  search  for  food, 
come  together,  cHng  each  to  each  as  close  as  may  be  in  that 
arrow-dance  of  theirs,  and  sing  for  hours  their  monotonous 
chorus,  it  is  certainly  not  done  in  order  that  they  may  see 
bare  and  actual  life,  but  rather  that  they  may  escape  it  and 
forget  it.     It  is  not  surgery  they  seek,  but  medicine,  and 


THE   TRIUMPH    OF   THE   ARTIST  467 

this  either  tonic  or  opiate ;  indeed,  the  twofold  function  of 
poetry  could  be  ranged  under  such  a  head.  Tonic  were 
the  cheery  chorals  of  actual  labour,  old  as  social  man,  songs 
of  battle  and  the  march,  festal  recapitulation  of  hunt  and 
work  and  fight.  They  idealized  life ;  they  appealed  to  sym- 
pathy, and  heartened  the  solitary  by  a  sense  of  brotherhood. 
So,  in  these  latter  days,  tonic  are  the  passages  which  stir  the 
heart  of  a  young  man  who  reads  wisely  his  Goethe,  and 
tonic  too  —  why  not.''  —  all  those  jingling  platitudes  beloved 
and  quoted  of  the  youth  who  make  valedictory  speeches  in 
the  village  school ;  tonic,  in  fine,  whatever  gedenke  zit  leben 
rings  out  from  poets  of  the  virile  and  the  sane.  And  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end,  this  tonic  poetry  falls  naturally 
into  the  rhythm  of  a  march.  On  the  other  hand,  poetry  is 
an  opiate ;  the  solitary  man  ran  to  a  choral  throng  not  only 
that  he  might  find  brotherhood  and  sympathy,  but  also  that 
he  might  forget  himself,  —  a  task  which  the  wild  chorus  of 
Dionysos  could  accomplish  no  less  surely  and  thoroughly 
than  the  very  grapes  and  vintage  of  the  god.  Like  these, 
poetry  helped  man  to  forget  his  troubles ;  like  these,  the 
whirl  and  motion  of  cadenced  dancing  brought  about  a  kind 
of  intoxication ;  and  the  graceful  words  with  which  Sir 
William  Temple  concludes  his  essay  on  poetry  have  gained 
a  deeper  and  yet  a  more  literal  meaning  through  the  re- 
searches of  ethnology  and  the  proof  which  now  lies  before 
us  of  the  extent  to  which  primitive  man  has  found  in  dance 
and  song  a  refuge  from  the  bare  hideousness  of  life.  For 
this  early  art,  for  this  soothing  and  flattering  function  of  it, 
the  main  force  lay  in  rhythm ;  and  if  one  wishes  to  call 
rhythm  the  conventional  part  of  poetry,  one  degrades  it  not 
a  whit  by  the  name.  Early  poetry  was  exactly  that,  —  a 
conventional  affair,  an  idealized  view  of  life,  now  tonic  and 
now  opiate  in  its  aim.  But  whether  to  hearten  or  to  soothe, 
stimulant  or  sedative,  poetry  found  its  initial  source  of  energy 


468  THE   BEGINNINGS  OF   POETRY 

in  rhythm  ;  most  intimate  of  all  the  arts,  and  nearest  to  the 
heart  of  man,  poetry  will  part  with  this  pulse  of  rhythm  only 
when  the  sea  shall  part  with  its  tides. 

Rhythm,  then,  binds  in  a  single  bond  both  the  beginning 
and  the  end.  But  its  formula  is  one  which  any  rimer  can 
use  with  more  or  less  skill,  and  modern  verse  makes  far 
wider  and  deeper  claims,  claims  which  no  one  has  thought  to 
carry  back  to  the  beginnings  of  poetry.  Where,  in  those 
early  days,  was  that  rare  quality  of  imagination  to  which  the 
critic  now  appeals  when  he  sets  off  a  masterpiece  of  poetry 
from  its  rivals  ?  To  answer  this  question,  one  cannot  cite 
mere  history ;  chorus  and  refrain  and  shards  of  rustic  rime 
must  be  left  aside ;  and  one  must  even  beg  a  little  help  from 
aesthetics  itself  :  so  muss  deim  dock  die  Hexe  dran. 

Described  in  its  simplest  form,  the  quality  of  modern  poetic 
imagination  seems  to  be  a  power,  by  suggestive  use  of  musi- 
cal and  figurative  human  speech,  to  put  the  solitary  reader 
into  the  mood  which  would  arise  naturally  in  him  under  the 
pressure  of  certain  actual  events  or  of  a  certain  actual  scene. 
To  repeat  the  phrase  of  Sainte-Beuve,  "  la  poesie  ne  consiste 
pas  a  tout  dire,  mais  a  tout  faire  rever."  Even  primitive 
poetry  was  an  idealization,  an  abstraction,  a  narcotic,  a  kind 
of  waking  dream  ;  modern  poetry  is  also  a  dream,  but  with 
deeper  and  wider  issues,  and  with  a  purpose  far  more  clearly 
defined.  Now  the  great  passages  of  poetry,  such  as  those 
which  Matthew  Arnold  used  as  tests  for  excellence,  easily 
fall  into  one  of  the  two  categories ;  they  revive,  even  create, 
the  mood  felt  either  in  the  pressure  of  actual  events  or  in  the 
presence  of  an  actual  scene.  That  beautiful  line  which 
Arnold  quotes  from  Dante  is  simply  the  imaginative  and 
conventionalized  sense  of  beatific  worship  such  as  all  men 
have  felt  in  varying  degree;  while  for  the  thousand  cases 
where  nature  is  treated,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  of 
the  tie  which  binds  even  the  most  imaginative  and  solitary 


THE   TRIUMPH   OF   THE   ARTIST  469 

poet  to  the  old  singing  throng.  Nature  is  nothing  without 
man  to  interpret  it;  and  neither  man  nor  nature  could  stand 
in  this  mutual  relation  had  not  social  consent  and  social  pro- 
cesses created  these  abstract  ideas,  this  very  "  man,"  this  very 
"  nature,"  by  the  reciprocal  working  of  communal  and  indi- 
vidual forces.  It  was  thus  a  social  process  which  brought 
man  to  read  his  condition  and  fates  in  terms  of  nature,  or 
else  to  read  nature  in  terms  of  his  own  condition  and  fates. 
His  own  condition  and  fates  were  ideas  that  came  to  him 
through  a  kind  of  social  reflection  ;  and  nature  grew  "  poetic  " 
only  by  reason  of  man's  social  organization,  which  sprang 
from  consciousness  of  kind,  took  shape  in  consent,  and  has 
begotten  first  the  communal  idea  and  then  the  idea  of 
humanity.  Only  the  eye  "  which  hath  kept  watch  o'er  man's 
mortality"  can  see  the  "poetic"  side  of  nature;  and  even 
man's  mortality  is  a  fact  which  came  home  to  him  in  this 
poetic  sense  only  when  social  organization  had  put  the  notion 
of  humanity  before  his  mind.  So  much  is  said  of  being 
"alone  with  nature"  as  a  necessary  condition  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  its  poetic  side,  and  for  sympathy  with  it,  that  one 
forgets  what  sympathy  means.  The  social  foundation  is 
now  forgotten  ;  without  it,  however,  there  would  be  no  poet's 
solitary  rapture  at  all.  Sympathy  of  the  poet  at  its  highest 
is  only  rising  to  a  new  pitch  in  the  sense  of  kind ;  and 
although  the  prayer  of  St.  Francis  ^  has  been  quoted  nigh 
unto  death,  one  may  be  allowed  to  revive  it,  not  merely 
because  of  its  wide  sympathy,  embracing  "  my  brother,  the 
sun,"  and  all  created  things,  but  also  because  this  sympathy 
is  the  poetic  expression  of  an  idea  which  St.  Francis  put  into 
actual  working  on  earth,  in  that  community  of  brothers  in 
the  bonds  of  divine  and  human  love. 

Nature,  however,  and  the  fates  of  man  are  not  always  so 
stupendous  or   so   abstract   in   their  relations.     There   is    a 

1  See  above,  p.  155. 


470  THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

close,  familiar  tie,  now  cheery  in  its  kind,  and  now  sad,  in 
the  coming  and  going  of  the  seasons.  How  much  of  modern 
poetry  is  bound  up  with  this  simple  and  obvious  motive ;  and 
how  easily  one  finds  here  the  connection  between  new  song 
and  old !  In  a  preceding  chapter  it  was  the  difference  we 
sought ;  here  it  is  the  identity,  not  merely  of  rhythm,  but  of 
imaginative  force.  Much  has  been  said  of  that  lyric  appeal 
to  the  season  and  to  the  scene  with  which  rude  songs  of  the 
dance,  and,  later,  actual  ballads,  were  wont  to  begin  :  Sumer 
ys  ycumen  in,  and  Lenten  is  comen  with  Love  to  tonne,  are 
fossil  bits  of  English  verse  in  this  kind.  So,  too,  as  the 
coming  season  was  welcomed,  the  parting  season  had  its 
lyric  regret.  What  more  is  done  by  the  most  imaginative 
poem  of  our  day,  than  to  revive  in  the  solitary  reader  that 
immediate  delight  or  sorrow  of  the  singing  and  dancing 
throng }  When  one  says  that  the  poet  ennobles  this  actual 
scene,  and  adds  something  which  was  not  present  in  sunshine 
and  woods  and  waters  and  green  earth,  not  even  in  the  song 
of  the  birds,  what  else  does  one  mean  but  that  the  poet  has 
brought  these  things  under  the  spell  of  human  emotion,  pre- 
cisely as  the  human  emotion  of  the  dancers  mingled  with  the 
scene  of  their  festivity  'i  Nothing  is  more  common  in  folk- 
song than  lament  for  wintry  desolation,  for  the  silence  and 
absence  of  the  birds.  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide  touches 
the  old  motive  and  the  old  cadence  with  slight  but  graceful 
art;  and  it  is  "I"  instead  of  "we,"  although  the  communal 
emotion  is  not  far  away.  Then  comes  the  full  power  of 
imagination  in  a  certain  sonnet,  and  in  a  certain  line  of  it :  — 

Bare,  ruin'd  choirs  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang. 

Take  away  the  "  ruin'd  choirs,"  and  of  course  one  takes  away 
Shakspere ;  but  there  is  another  alternative.  Take  away 
the  older  festal  throngs  of  summer,  the  sorrowing  throngs  at 
its  close ;  take  away  that  cadence  of  consenting  feet  which 


THE   TRIUMPH   OF   THE   ARTIST  471 

echoes  in  the  verse;  take  away  the  human  sympathy  which 
was  so  fostered  by  this  consent,  —  and  those  "ruin'd  choirs" 
are  left  as  purposeless  and  idle  as  the  void  of  space. 

So,  too,  with  other  forms  of  imagination  in  poetry.  Nature 
apart,  and  on  themes  as  abstract  as  one  will,  great  artistic 
poetry  is  still  powerless  to  sever  its  connection  with  this  com- 
munal imagination  of  sympathy  and  consent.  Some  of  the 
strong  passages  in  later  poetry  derive  their  energy  from 
despair.  "Man's  one  crime,"  says  the  Spaniard,  "is  to  have 
been  born;"  while  between  Fitzgerald  and  the  tentmaker  lies 
the  credit  for  that  verse  which  bids  God  take  as  well  as 
give  pardon  for  the  wickedness  of  mankind.  This  is  called 
sublime.  When  the  savage  beats  and  breaks  his  gods,  or 
reviles  them  in  reiterated  verse,  he  is  called  silly ;  but  per- 
haps his  disillusions,  put  into  choral  statement,  may  bring 
him  something  of  that  grim  comfort  which  civilized  man 
finds  in  a  rhythmic  defiance  not  absolutely  different  in  kind. 
Nor,  again,  was  the  passing  of  a  god,  or  of  a  system  of  gods, 
the  same  thing  for  communal  chorus  with  those  mounting 
races  in  the  prime,  as  with  these  belated  and  stunted  hordes. 
Defiance,  however,  apart,  on  the  positive  religious  side  choral 
praise  is  still  a  fact;  and  choral  comment  on  the  ways  of  God 
with  man,  that  enthusiasm  for  which  imagination  is  only  a 
substitute,  that  sursitm  corda  of  congregational  singing,  that 
lapse  of  the  individual  and  that  triumph  of  the  community, 
are  enough  to  check  one's  impulse  to  think  of  early  communal 
singing  in  terms  of  a  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  opera.  It  is  hard, 
indeed,  to  pass  back  from  conditions  of  solitary  and  artistic 
imagination  to  conditions  of  communal  imagination ;  but  the 
process  is  not  impossible.  If  one  will  simply  open  a  Shak- 
spere  and  read  aloud  the  passage  where  Ophelia  tells  her 
father  how  Hamlet  came  to  her  closet  and  bade  her  that 
silent  farewell ;  the  praise  of  friendship  chanted  so  finely  by 
Hamlet  to  Horatio;    the  parting  at  dawn   of    Romeo  and 


472  THE    BEGINNINGS   OF   POETRY 

Juliet;  the  declaration  of  Portia;^  the  last  speech  of  Othello; 
Macbeth  arming  for  the  final  fight ;  Prospero  at  the  end  of 
the  mask :  familiar  as  these  all  are,  the  mere  series  of  impres- 
sions will  give  one  a  new  sense  of  the  varied  creative  power 
to  be  found  in  a  single  field  of  poetry.  Then,  with  all  this 
ringing  in  one's  ears,  let  one  read  aloud  the  shorter  version 
of  Sir  Patrick  Spetis,  and  compare  its  imaginative  range  with 
the  imaginative  range  of  Shakspere.  Neither  simplicity 
alone,  nor  the  change  from  drama  to  ballad,  will  cover  this 
difference.^  The  strongest  differencing  element  is  the  antith- 
esis of  individual  artistic  imagination  in  widest  range,  and 
of  sympathy  concentrated  upon  a  small,  but  compact  group. 
It  is  a  step  from  the  great  world  to  a  little  canton,  from 
humanity  to  a  clan ;  spaces  have  shrunk,  and  sympathy  almost 
lies  in  that  actual  touch  of  hand  and  hand,  which  once  did  for 
primitive  poetry  what  imagination  now  does  for  the  poet.  At 
the  heart  of  them  both,  however,  drama  and  ballad,  is  this 
sympathy  and  consent  of  kind.  True,  the  ballad  is  late  and 
has  its  share  of  art ;  but  the  line  drawn  to  it  from  the  drama 
is  a  curve  to  be  projected  into  prehistoric  conditions,  and 
able  to  connect  the  crude  sympathy  of  kind  expressed  in 
choral  repetition  with  noblest  imaginative  achievements  of 
the  perfected  art. 

To  create  the  communal  elements,  poetry  had  to  pass 
through  ages  of  preparation.  Dreary  ages  they  seem  now, 
and  rudest  preparation,  in  contrast  with  present  verse  ;  but 
it  may  be  said  that  the  poetry  was  not  insipid  for  its  makers 
and  hearers,  and  the  art  was  not  crude  for  the  primitive 
artists.  One  must  ignore  with  equal  mind  the  romantic 
notion  of  a  paradise  of  poetry  at  the  prime,  as  well  as  a  too 
fondly  cherished  idea  of  ethnology  that  belated  if  not  degraded 

1  You  see  me,  Lord  Bassanio,  where  I  stand  .  .  . 

—  Merck.  Ven.  III.  2. 
"^  See  above,  pp.  140,  155. 


THE   TRIUMPH    OF   THE   ARTIST  473 

wanderers  on  the  bypaths  of  human  culture  are  to  stand  as 
models  for  the  earliest  makers  of  song.  Let  one  think  of 
that  poetry  of  the  beginnings  as  rude  to  a  degree,  but  nobly 
rude,  seeing  that  it  was  big  with  promise  of  future  achieve- 
ment, and  not  a  thing  born  of  mere  stagnation.  Circling  in 
the  common  dance,  moving  and  singing  in  the  consent  of 
common  labour,  the  makers  of  earliest  poetry  put  into  it 
those  elements  without  which  it  cannot  thrive  now.  They 
put  into  it,  for  the  formal  side,  the  consent  of  rhythm,  out- 
ward sign  of  the  social  sense;  and,  for  the  nobler  mood,  they 
gave  it  that  power  by  which  it  will  always  make  the  last 
appeal  to  man,  the  power  of  human  sympathy,  whether  in 
love  or  in  hate,  in  joy  or  in  sorrow,  the  power  that  links  this 
group  of  sensations,  passions,  hopes,  fears,  which  one  calls 
self,  to  all  the  host  of  kindred  selves  dead,  living,  or  to  be 
born.  No  poetry  worthy  of  the  name  has  failed  to  owe  its 
most  diverse  triumphs  to  that  abiding  power.  It  is  in  such 
a  sense  that  prehistoric  art  must  have  been  one  and  the  same 
with  modern  art.  Conditions  of  production  as  well  as  of 
record  have  changed ;  the  solitary  poet  has  taken  the  place 
of  a  choral  throng,  and  solitary  readers  represent  the  listen- 
ing group ;  but  the  fact  of  poetry  itself  reaches  below  all 
these  mutations,  and  is  founded  on  human  sympathy  as  on 
a  rock.  More  than  this.  It  is  clear  from  the  study  of  poetic 
beginnings  that  poetry  in  its  larger  sense  is  not  a  natural 
impulse  of  man  simply  as  man.  His  rhythmic  and  kindred 
instincts,  latent  in  the  solitary  state,  found  free  play  only 
under  communal  conditions,  and  as  powerful  factors  in  the 
making  of  society. 


INDEX 


Accent,  39. 

Addison,  136. 

Adonis,  236. 

/Eschylus,  369. 

/Esthetics,  119,  468. 

Afghans,  songs  of  the,  395. 

Africa,  songs  of,  200,  204,  249  f.,  252,  270  f., 

289,  329,  394,  397  f. 
Albania,  poetry  of,  217,  228. 
Algeria,  songs  of,  203. 
Allegory,  145,  307. 
Allen,  F.  D.,  85,  260. 
Alliteration,  68 f.,  75,  86  ff.,  256,  267. 
Amcebean,  123,  144,  200,  4Oof.,408flf.,  458 f. 
Animals,  songs  of,  8,  loo. 
Anthology,  32. 
Arabic  verse,  79. 
Arabs.  395. 
Arcadia,  the,  61. 
Aretino,  144. 
Aristotle,  i,  42fr.,  113,  132,  136,  369  f,,  433, 

453.  459  f- 
Armenia,  songs  of,  203. 
Arnold,  M.,  410,  421,  468. 
Arval  hymn,  69,  260 f.,  297 f.,  334. 
Aryan  verse,  85  ff. 
Ass,  feast  of  the,  301. 
Assyria,  poetry  of,  261. 
Attila,  264  ;  funeral  of,  223  f. 
Aubrey,  225,  289,  302,  304. 
Augustine,  St.,  222. 
Ausonius,  2875. 
Australia,  songs  of,  171,  330;  vocero  in,  248. 

B 

Babylon  (ballad),  195 f. 

Bacon,  33  f.,  45,  435,  460, 

Bagehot,  36,  169. 

Bain,  57,  365. 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  9,  16,  364,  384. 

Ballad,  27  f.,  64,  70,  72  f.,  116,  130,  134,  156, 
164  ff.,  168  f.,  172,  175,  314,  316  fif.,  321, 
327,  342,  415,  422,  454,  472;  epithets  in 
the,  193 ff.;  making  of  the,  184;  mate- 
rial of  the,  179;  passing  of  the,  164  ff., 
177,  211,  271  f.,  292  f.,  303. 


Ballade,  257, 

Ballads,  not  indecent,  169  ff. ;  omissions  in, 

197  f.;  rank  in,  177;   recited,  189,  326; 

style  of,  189  ff. 
Ballati,  231. 
Ballet,  433. 
Ball-playing,  97,  337. 
Balzac,  466. 
Barbour,  265. 
Baring-Gould,  168,  342. 
Barnes,  Dr.  Thomas,  50. 
Barth,  360. 
Bartsch,  242. 
Basques,  the,  234,  395. 
Bastian,  330,  361,  385,  428. 
Batteux,  108. 
Baudelaire,  32,  59. 
Baumgarten,  38. 
Beattie,  35. 
Beaurepaire,  293, 
Bechtel,  449. 
Bell,  307. 

Beowulf,  193,  222  ff.,  331. 
Beranger,  140. 
Berger,  A.  E.,  136,  164. 
Bergk,  85. 
Bernheim,  362. 
Berni,  457. 
Bertrand,  32,  59. 
Bible,  48,  56  ff.,  124  f.,  i86  f.,  226  f.,  261  ff., 

271,  361,  423. 
Biedermann,  75  f.,  256. 
Biology,  13,  363  f. 
Bion,  elegy  of,  237. 
Bistrom,  188,  198,  211. 
Blacksmith,  songs  of  the,  276  f, 
Blackwell,  131,  454. 
Blade,  203,  218,  233,  234  ff.,  279,  341. 
Blank  verse,  preaching  in,  80. 
Blankenburg,  433. 
Blemont,  170,  382. 
Boas,  96. 

Boat-songs,  98,  265,  272  ff.,  289  f. 
Bockel,  70,  72,  no,  168,  185,  270  ff.,  307. 
Bohme,  182,  281,  283,  308,  328,  343,  415. 
Bolte,  426. 
Borrow,  George,  234. 


475 


476 


INDEX 


Borrowing  in  literature,  351  ff. 

Bosanquet,  56. 

Botocudos,  94  f.,  189,  209,  312,  330,  374, 

390  f.,  421,  439,  463. 
Bourdeau,  362. 
Boynton,  J.  H.,  317  f, 
Brandl,  413. 
Brand's  Antiquities,  218,  276,  294,  296  f., 

303  f.,  3061.,  343 
Branle,  The,  341. 
Brazilians,  songs  of  the,  246  ff. 
Breath-lengths,  94,  100  f. 
Brenner,  406. 
Breton  ballads,  183. 
Bright,  J.  W.,  148. 
Biinkmann,  452. 
Brinton,  D.  G.,  190,  253,  313  f. 
Broadwood  and  Maitland,  294/.,  302. 
Brown,  Baldwin,  251,  367  f. 
Brown,  Dr.  John,  96. 
Brown,  T.  E.,  410. 
Browning,  R.,  30,  347. 
Bruchmann,  64,  70,  171,  428  f. 
Briicke,  81. 
Brugmann,  445. 
Brugsch,  236. 

BrunetiSre,  6,  26  f.,  377,  389. 
Biicher,  10,  63,  107  ff.,  270  ff.,  345,  369,  373, 

386,  459  f.,  462,  464. 
Buck,  Dr.  Gertrude,  446,  448. 
Buckle,  127,  175. 
Budde,  62,  186,  218,  226  f.,  262. 
Bugge,  180. 
Bujeaud,  166,  258. 

Burckhardt,  141,  144,  158,  160,  425,  455. 
Burdach,  432. 
Burden,  275,  316  ff. 
Burette,  346. 

Burns,  170,  209,  308,  410. 
Bushmen,  90. 


Casdmon,  403. 

Calmet,  124  f. 

Campbell,  J.  F.,  72,  179,  192,  400. 

Cante-fable,  71  f.,  97. 

Caracolu,  231. 

Carlyle,  51,59, 

Carmen,  68. 

Carmina  Burana,  207  f.,  323. 

Carole,  the,  341. 

Carstanjen,  359. 

Carver,  249,  333. 

Casaubon,  I.,  44 f. 

Castr6n,  200. 

Catullus,  207,  217,  220,  258,  382. 


Cell,  the,  357  f. 

Celts,  vocero  of  the,  239  fF. 

Chambers,  323. 

Chant,  80,  82  ff. 

Chappell,  294,  305  f.,  316,  319,  411. 

Charles  of  Orleans,  150. 

Charms,  205,  245,  283  f.,  300. 

Chateaubriand,  60. 

Chaucer,  64,  146,  222,  229,  239,  447. 

Child,    Professor,  70,    164,   181,   307,  317, 

319.  413  f- 
Children,  9   ff.,    102    ff. ;    games   of,  209, 

297,  322  ff.,  335  f.,  344,  429 ;  songs  of,  284. 
China,  drama  in,  72;  songs  m,  282. 
Chorus,  27,  67,  70,  83,  86,  91  ff.,  100,  105, 

186,  219,  221,  236  f.,  238,  249,  257,  260, 

262  f.,  270  f.,  295,  308  f.,  315,  332,  420  f., 

422,  425,  440,  442  ff.,  450,  454,  467,  471 ; 

cereal,  255,  310;    Greek,  72,    186,   257, 

261,  369,  372. 
Church,  the  mediaeval,  153. 
Cnut,  song  of,  275. 
Coleridge,  35,  51,  421. 
Colour  in  ballads,  213  f. 
Commedia  dell'  Arte,  425. 
Communal  poetry,  116  ff.,  122,  125,  129  ff., 

158,  163  ff. ;  elements  of,  172. 
Comparative   literature,   352  ff. ;    method, 

31.  40. 
Comparetti,  64,  177,  352,  355,  402,  443. 
Comte,  152,  360,  378. 
Condorcet,  10. 
Consent,   communal,    91,    loi,    105,   107, 

220  f.,  255,  332,  348,  364,  376,  383,  386, 

440,  461  f.,  466. 
Cook,  voyages  of,  331  f. 
Coplas,  401,  405,  425. 
Corsica,  vocero  in,  231  ff. 
Counting-out  rimes,  201,  203  f. 
Courthope,  Professor,  181. 
Coussemaker,  226,  280,  302  f.,  324, 
Crane,  325. 

Crescimbeni,  229,  341  f.,  456. 
Criticism,  6,  31,  216. 
Cumulative  songs,  98,  200  ff.,  278. 

D 

Dance,  84  f.,  105,  106,  147,  174,  184,  188, 
202,  209,  217,  222  f.,  231,  246,  248,  250, 
260  f.,  275,  291,  299,  301,  305,  311  ff., 
318  ff.,  322  ff.,  327  ff.,  354  f-,  367.  370, 
409,  412  f.,  415,  428  ff.,  431,  441,  443, 
463  f.,  466  f. ;  in  churches,  335 ;  by  pairs, 
321,  340  f. ;  and  rhythm,  69,  78. 

Dances,  panic,  338 ;  of  the  savage,  18  f., 
90  ff.,  95  f.,  328  ff. 


INDEX 


477 


D'Annunzio,  60  f.,  206,  230  f. 

Dante,  45,    122  f.,    142  f.,  145,   341  f.,  361, 

468. 
Darmesteter,  259,  395. 
Darwin,  8,  24,  88,  357  f.,  428,  43I. 
Daudet,  433. 

Declamation,  82,  86  f.,  99. 
Degeneration,  16,  18. 
Dekker,  47. 

Deor,  song  of,  147,  266. 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  58. 
Dialect,  190. 
Dickens,  276/. 
Dilthey,  141. 
Dithyramb,  66,  370. 
Dixon,  J.  H.,  294  f. 
Donovan,  104  ff.,  186,  345,  365,  368  f.,  386, 

392- 
Don  Quixote,  425. 
Doring,  370,  420. 
Douglas,  Sir  George,  167  f.,  173. 
Drack,  M.,  424. 
Drama,  39,  66,  83,  106, 117,  189,338, 424  fF., 

434- 
Drayton,  303. 
Dryden,  59,  295. 
Dualism,  116  ff.,  136  ff. 
Dubos,  35,  446. 
Dunbar,  146,  151,  161. 
Dunger,  406. 
Diintzer,  68. 

E 

Earle,  Professor,  197. 

Ebert,  258,  306. 

Egger,  215. 

Egypt,    poetry   of,    271,    285;   vocero    in, 

237  f. 
Ehrenreich,  94  f. 
Elements,  The  Four,  322  f. 
Elliott,  Ebenezer,  52. 
Eloquence,  53. 
Elyot,  Sir  T.,  345  f. 
Emerson,  35. 
Emotion,  13,  83,  100,  105,  151  f.,  155,  266, 

364  f..  374  f.,  386. 
England,  ballads  of,  168,  183,  187,  326  f. 
Enthusiasm,  126  f. 
Epic,  39,  66,  117,  174,  179,  189,  324,  420, 

422  ff.,  434. 
Erotic  dances,  336,  367;  songs,  8,  20,  88  f., 

239,  401  f.,  407,  420,  460. 
Eskimo,  96  f. ;  songs  of  the,  243,  311,  313, 

391,  400. 
Esthonians,  272. 
Ethnology,  14  ff.,  92  ff.,  375 ;  evidences  of, 

19  ff.,  22. 


Ethology,  6. 
Euphuism,  61. 

Evolution,  curves  of,  26  ff.,  84,  163,  X72, 
178,  422,  472. 


Fabyan's  Chronicle,  265. 

Fame,  141  1. 

Faroe  Islands,  songs  of,  318  f.,  337,  399  f., 

428  f. 
Fauriel,  217,  227,  415. 
Fell,  Dr.,  80. 

Festal  origin  of  speech,  104  ff. 
Finns,  poetry  of  the,  166,  198,  213,  252,  270, 

355.  402,  452. 
Firmenich,  204,  219,  287  f.,  292,  302,  308, 

324,  408  ff. 
Flanders,  ballads  in,  226,  294,  303,  324. 
Fletcher,  Alice  C,  254;   Rev.  Mr.,  308. 
Flyting,    144,   200,    212,    227,   279,   287   f., 

306  ff.,  321,  391,  399  ff.,  429,  458  f. 
Folksong  (see  Ballad),  106, 
Fontenelle,  117. 
Foresinger,  315,  318  f.,  327. 
France,  songs  of,  139,  320,  325. 
France,  Anatole,  9,  139. 
Francke,  K.,  152,  182. 
Freericks,  259. 
Freytag,  360. 
Fuegians,  253. 
Funeral,  songs  of  the,  see  Vocero. 

G 

Gab,  331. 

Gaelic  ballads,  192. 

Garnett,  425. 

Gascoigne,  45. 

Gascony,  ballads  and  songs  of,  203,  233, 

235  f-.  247.  279^- 
Gautier,  33,  359. 
Gayley  and  Scott,  6,  54. 
Geijer,  327. 
Gender,  445  f. 
Genius,  126. 
Gerber,  370,  449,  452  f. 
Germanic  epic,  191,  198,  209, 447  f. ;  poetry, 

64;  verse,  86  ff. 
Germany,  ballads  of,  168,  182  f,  190,  216. 
Gesture,  330,  428,  431. 
Giddings,  F.  H.,  360,  372,  385. 
Gnomic  poetry,  95,  421. 
Goethe,  2,  49,  73,  116  f.,  118,  315,  410,  433. 
Goldsmith,  36. 

Goncourt,  yournal  des,  359,  433. 
Gorgias,  66. 
Gottsched,  10,  13,  64,  124, 


478 


INDEX 


Grasserie,  R.  de  la,  76  ff. 

Gray,  T.,  162,  197,  451. 

Greek   communal  poetry,  266,  271,  284  f. ; 

poetry,  modern,  192,  217,  227,  273,  415. 
Greenes  FunerallSy  206. 
Grimm,  J.,  65,  133 f.,  136  f.,  182,  256,  283, 

300,  341,  350,  436,  439,  445,  449. 
Groos,  102,  337,  365. 
Grosse,  14,  18,  22,  90,  178,  239,  336,  345, 

378  f.,  381,  383,385. 
Grube,  299,  315. 
Grundtvig,  167,  176,  275,  317. 
Gruppe,  14,  443. 
Guest,  316,  318. 

Guilds,  142,  149,  153,  160,  165  f. 
Gumplowicz,  15,  359,  378. 
Gurney,  Edmund,  55,  89,  256. 
Guyau,  3,  40,  121,  348,  387. 

H 

Haeckel,  9. 

Hahn,  J.  G.,  217,  228. 

Hallivvell,  284. 

Hamann,  125. 

Hampson,  276,  301. 

Hardy,  Thomas,  25,  114,  292,  344. 

Harmony,  92,  109. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  56. 

Hartmann,  von,  361. 

Harvest,  Highland,  2895. 

Harvest-home,  178,  280  f.,  286,  291,  294  f., 

309- 
Harvey,  Gabriel,  207. 
Haym,  152,  382. 
Hazlitt,  36. 

Hebrew  prophets,  262!. 
Hebrews,  dance  of,  336,  346. 
Heckewelder,  309  f. 
Hegel,  33,  S3  f.,  423. 
Heine,  161,  410. 
Heinzel,  159,  177,  209,  448. 
Henderson,  181. 
Hennequin,  6,  359,  378,  388. 
Herder,   119,    122,  125  f.,   131  f.,    171,  346, 

458. 
Hero  and  Leander,  179,  196. 
Herodotus,  238,  374. 
Herrick,  305. 
Hesiod,  216,  437. 
Higginson,  Colonel,  97  f. 
Hildebrand  Lay,  212. 
Him,  Y.,  260,  328,  336,  460. 
Historical  school,  122  ff. 
History,  53. 

Hoffmann,  94 ;  von  Fallersleben,  269. 
Hogg,  James,  173. 


Homer,    44,   49,  175,  221.  285,  333  f.,  337, 

361,  370,  382.  423.  437.  447- 
Homogeneous   community,  167  f.,  176  ff., 

244  U  357.  374  ff-  443- 
Hook,  Theodore,  396. 
Horace,  107,  142,  186,  404,  411. 
Hudson,  366. 

Hugo,  Victor,  49,  121, 142  ff.,  362. 
Humboldt,  W.  von,  41,  133,  357,  382. 
Humour,  159  ff.,  464. 
Hungary,  poetry  of,  64. 
Hyde,  Douglas,  404  f. 
Hylas,  238. 
Hymn,  153  f.,  442  f. 

I 

"  I,"  in  children,  9. 
"  I,"  the,  in  ballads,  182  ff.,  187  f. 
"I,"  the,  in  the  Psalms,  186  f. 
Ibsen,  466. 

Iceland,  songs  of,  318  f.,  337,  400  f. 
Imagination,  35,  37,  136,  391,  468  ff. 
Imitation,  352,  362,  369,  375,  386  f. 
Improvisation,  92,   95,   97,  113,   180,   199, 
212  f.,  222,  227,  234,  240,  273,  275,  287  ff., 

292,  311.  355.  369  f-  394  ff-  396  ff-  401  ff., 
404,  415  ff.,  418  f.,  421,  424  ff.,  428  f.,  432, 
441,  455  ff. ;  two  kinds  of,  396. 

Inarticulate  sounds,  30,  253,  260. 

Indians,  American,  93,  189,  245  ff.,  253  ff., 

273.  309  ff- 313  f-  333^-394- 
Individual,  139,  141  ff.,  151,  153,  155,  183, 

212, 371  ff.,  377  ff.,  381,  382  ff.,  389, 391  ff., 

393  f.,  407,  421,  429,  432,  452,  464;  and 

society,  no  f.,  116, 126,  147. 
Infant,  12  ff.,  100. 
Instinct,  355  f.,  363  ff.,  383. 
Invention,  349  ff.,  361,  386  f. 
Iranian  verse,  85. 
I  sis,  vocero  of,  237  f. 
Italy,  improvisation  in,  424  ff.,  455  ff. 


Jacobowski,  11  ff.,  254,  345. 

Jacobs,  Joseph,  71,  164. 

Jacobsthal,  69,  93. 

Japan,  poetry  of,  64 ;  songs  of,  282. 

Jeanroy,  174,  179,  207, 258,  308,  320  f.,  341  f., 

401,  405. 
Jeremiah,  230. 
Jessopp,  286,  291. 
Jews,  poem  of  the,  205. 
Jigs,  342,  426. 
Job,  58,  261. 
Johnson,  Dr.,  37,  289 f.,  347. 


INDEX 


479 


Jonson,  Ben,  34,  169,  316. 
Junod,  105. 

K 

Kalevala  (see  Comparetti),  64. 

Kawczynski,  349  ff. 

Keane,  A.  H.,  378. 

Keasbey,  L.  M.,  463. 

Keats,  157. 

Keening,  240  f. 

Kenning,  191,  209,  452. 

Khorovod,  327. 

Kina,  the,  226  f. 

Kind,  sense  of,  115,  348,  385  f.,  472. 

Kingsley,  Miss,  254. 

Kipling,  388,  452. 

Kirn  (see  Harvest-home),  290 f. 

Kleinpaul,  176. 

Koester,  221. 

Kogel,  74,  189,  218,  220,  261, 298  f.,  340, 417. 

Kollo,  the,  339. 

Krejci,  373  f. 

Krohn,  166. 


Labour,  songs  of,  70,  78,  91,  107  ff.,  202  f., 

269  ff.,  317,  369,  402,  419,  450. 
Lhc,  340. 

Lafitau,  248,  252,  311. 
La  Motte,  433. 
Lamprecht,  360. 
Landstad,  166,  414,  418. 
Lang,  Andrew,  436. 
Lang,  H.  R.,  459. 
Language,  origin  of,  392,  450. 
Lapps,  the,  92,  129. 
Largess-shilling,  the,  297. 
Latin  communal  poetry,  271,273,  283,  285, 

404  f.,  424. 
Layamon,  265. 
Le  Bon,  6,  360,  377  f.,  382. 
Lefebvre,  2. 
Legend,  189. 
Lery,  246  ff.,  252,  312  f. 
Lescarbot,  247,  252,  333, 
Lessing,  84. 

Letourneau,  7,  11,  42,  308,  430,  447. 
Leyser,  46. 

Like  VVil  to  Like,  2A'2. 
Limburg  Chronicle,  182. 
Linos,  236  f.,  285. 
Lippert,  437. 
Literary  evolution,  23. 
Lithuania,  songs  of, 
Lityerses,  238,  285. 
Livy,  424. 


Longinus,  53,  58,  79. 
Loquin,  167. 
Lost  arts,  17. 
Lotze,  365. 

Lounsbury,  T.  R.,  447. 
Lowth,  47  f.,  262,  346. 
Lucian,  219,  222,  324,  336. 
Lucretius,  299,  436. 
Lundell,  418. 
Lyke-wake,  239  f. 
Lyngbye,  194,  232,  399. 
Lyric,  39,   117,  147,  173,420  ff.,  431,  434; 
origin  of,  8,  12. 

M 

McLennan,  J.  F.,  22. 

Maeterlinck,  60  f.,  206. 

Magic,  67,  283. 

Mahomet,  I. 

Maine,  Sir  H.,  379. 

Mallery,  428,  430. 

Malmesbury,  William  of,  301. 

Malory,  56. 

Maneros,  238,  285. 

Manley,  J.  M.,  337. 

Mannhardt,  238,  283,  294,  310,  343,  437. 

Mansongvar,  401. 

Marcaggi,  229,  231  ff. 

Marching-songs,  204,  269. 

Masing,  119  f.,  256. 

Masson,  57. 

Matriarchate,  10. 

May  songs,  281,  305  f. 

Meier,  John,  164. 

Mendelssohn,  Moses,  119. 

Meredith,  114. 

Merimee,  231. 

Metaphor,  161  f.,  190  ff.,  444 1 

Metre,  180. 

Metres,  origin  of,  no. 

Meumann,  81  ff.,  88,  99. 

Me.xico,  songs  of,  334. 

Meyer,  E.    H.,    166  f.,  216,  272,   279,  283, 

300,  306,  417. 
Meyer,  Gustav,  172,  181,  405,  407  ff. 
Meyer,  R.  M.,  176,  188,  209,  256  f.,  259  f„ 

267,  447,  452. 
Michel,  F.,  183,  234,  395. 
Milieu,  the,  358. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  51  f. 
Milton,  49,  207. 
Minstrel,    the,   181,  215  f.,   272,  315,  322, 

403.  454- 
Mitchill,  Senator,  19  ft 
Moller,  86  ff.,  267. 
Mommsen,  464. 


48o 


INDEX 


Monboddo,  go,  354,  357. 

Montaigne,  6,  129  f. 

Montanus,  296. 

More,  Sir  T.,  427. 

Morgan,  Lloyd,  121,  363,  365,  387. 

Morhof,  124. 

Mucke,  378. 

MiJllenhoff,  154,  218,  222,  267  f.,  284,  336  f., 

388,  437. 
Miiller,  D.  H.,  262. 
Miiller,  K.  O..  265. 
Miiller,  Max,  136,  436,  440,  455, 
Miiller,  W.,  301. 
Muse,  106. 
Music,    as    muse,    106;    in    poetry    (see 

Rhythm),  55. 
Musset,  A.  de,  453. 
Myth,  284,  293,  434  ff. 

N 

Nash,  Tom,  61,  280,  427. 
Nature,  25,  126,  468  fF. ;    and  art,  118  flf., 
133,  135,  137,  165 ;  in  ballads,  188, 192  f., 

321,413- 
Nauze,  M.  de  la,  124. 
Negro  slaves,  97  f. 
Neidhart,  323. 
Neniae,  221,  244. 
Neocorus,  218,  318  f.,  321,  340  f, 
Nerthus,  299  f.,  339. 
Newell,  W.  W.,  179,  284. 
Newman,  Cardinal,  446. 
Newton,  2. 

Nietzsche,  24,  59,  371  ff. 
Nigra,  Count,  180,  185,  405. 
Nisard,  169. 
Noire,  365,  392. 
Norden,  65  ff.,  74,  87,  145,  403. 
Northall,  160,  276,  278,  284. 
Northbrooke,  305. 


O 


Objective,  139  f.,  158. 
Ontogenesis,  9  ff. 
Opera,  424,  431. 
Oratory,  79  f. 
Ortoli,  231  f.,  279. 
Overbury,  277,  291. 


Pellissier,  461. 

Pantomime,  336,  429  ff. 

Parallelism,  62,  214. 

Paris,    Gaston,    150,    174,    185,   334,  341, 

352- 
Park,  Mungo,  397  f.,  422. 


Pastourelle,  326. 

Pater,  Walter,  55,  61,  258. 

Patten,  147. 

Paul,  81,  360. 

Peacock,  T.  L.,  i,  10. 

Pearson,  8,  10,  216. 

Peele,  George,  281. 

Pennant,  239,  270. 

Pennillion,  403. 

People,  mind  of  the,  360  f. 

Percy,  Bishop,  181. 

Perfetti,  456  ff. 

Persia,  Comedy  in,  428. 

Pervigilium  Veneris,  258. 

Petrarch,  2,  45,  145. 

Pfannenschmid,     238,     283,    286,    292    f., 

343- 

Phillips,  118. 

Phoenician  vocero,  236  f. 

Phylogenesis,  9  ff. 

Planch,  229. 

Plato,  I,  33  f ,  460. 

Play,  365  ff.,  369. 

Play-excitement,  368. 

Plutarch,  66,  270,  395. 

Poe,  51. 

Poet,  the,  347,  388,  390  ff.,  406,  433,  453  f., 
465.  470. 

Poetic  sentence,  33,  53. 

Poetics,  7. 

Poetry,  art  of,  3;  attacks  on,  i  ff. ;  begin- 
nings of,  4,  123,  464  ff. ;  biological  basis 
of,  8 ;  communal  elements  of,  433 ;  de- 
fence of,  I  ff. ;  definition  of,  4,  30,  51, 
118,  158;  earliest  form  of,  210  f,  314; 
elements  of,  29, 163,  172 ;  historical  treat- 
ment of,  5;  Latin,  141;  laws  in,  74  f. ; 
meaning  of,  4 ;  reading  of,  63 ;  and 
science,  2;  singing  of,  64,  72,  75  f.,  139, 
173,  180,  272. 

Poland,  songs  of,  270. 

Pope,  47. 

Porthan,  198  ff ,  269  f. 

Portugal,  songs  of,  208,  320  f. 

Posnett,  7,  142,  257,  260,  265,  336,  381  f., 
440. 

Praefica,  225,  229,  248. 

Praetorius,  242. 

Prickard,  A.  O.,  43. 

Processions,  communal,  224,  298  ff ,  304. 

Prose,  artistic,  65  ff. ;  periodic,  69  ;  poems 
in,  32,  38,  41,  59  ff. ;  priority  of,  63  ff., 
75  ff. ;  rhythmical,  67  ff. ;  and  verse,  line 
between,  62. 

Psalms,  the,  36,  153,  186  f,  209,  261  f.,  420, 
438. 


INDEX 


481 


Psychology,  364  fif.,  374!,  8  ft,  81. 

Pulci,  455. 
Pulszky,  26,  383. 


Quadrio,  43, 455. 

Quatrains  (see  Schnaderhiipfi) ,  213,  418. 

R 

Radloff,  71,  211  ff. 

Rain-song,  the,  300. 

Ralston,  166. 

Ranke,  360. 

Recitative,  91  f.,  104,  310. 

Reclus,  378. 

Refrain,  92,  97,  129,  174,  183,  190,  209,  225, 
230,  232,  253  f.,  256  ff.,  287,  291,  308  f., 
313  ff.,  354,  415  f.,  430,  443,  450;  in  Ger- 
manic poetry,  267 ;  in  Greek,  266 ;  nature 
of,  314  ff. 

Refrains,  agricultural,  279  ff. 

Reifferscheid,  288. 

Relativity,  14,  16. 

Religious  rites,  204,  220,  238,  260  f.,  282  ff., 
292,  300  f.,  305,  313,  333  ff.,  338  f.,  392,  436, 
444. 

Renan,  2. 

Repetition,  76, 193  ff.,  205  ff.,  231  f.,  236,  245, 

251,  255  f.,  313,  416,  451 ;  classes  of,  206; 
incremental,  194  ff.,  198  f.,   208  f.,   213  f., 

252,  254f.,  319,  325f.,423. 

Rhythm,  246,  332,  345,  348  ff.,  356,  383,  386, 
390,  421,  432,  463,  465  ff. ;  and  music,  79 ; 
nature  of,  99  ff.,  109 ;  derived  from  prose, 
63  ff. ;  as  a  social  factor,  93. 

Ribot,  100,  104,  140,  151,  364  f.,  369,  384. 

Riddles,  212,  452. 

Rime,  56,  68  f.,  75. 

Rimed  prose,  61. 

Ritson,  307. 

Robin  Hood,  ballads  of,  327. 

Romance,  179  f. 

Romanes,  364,  398. 

Romans,  dance  of  the  (see  Arval  hymn), 

334.  345- 
Ronsard,  45,  63,  122,  146,  150. 
Rose,  Romance  of  the,  362. 
RosiSres,  258  f.,  266. 
Rosenberg,  275,  317,  353 f. 
Roumania,  ballads  of,  72. 
Round,  the,  341  f. 
Rousseau,  127,  151,  157,  389. 
Riickert,  315. 

Rudimentary  growths  in  literature,  17. 
Rund&s,  406. 
Ruodlieb,  341, 


Ruscelli,  456. 

Russia,  ballads  of,  x66,  188,  198,  327. 


Sachs,  Hans,  281. 

Sainte-Beuve,  6,  148  f.,  388,  453,  465,  468. 

St.  Evremond,  447. 

St.  Francis,  prayer  of,  15s,  469. 

St.  Victor,  231,  233  f. 

Saintsbury,  Professor,  55. 

Sandys,  303. 

Sappho,  464. 

Sarcasm,  songs  of,  288 fl 

Satire,  404  f. 

Satura  Afenippea,  73. 

Saturnian  verse,  68. 

Savages,  9,  11,  13  ff.,  19  ff.,  65,  82,  90  ff., 

95   f.,  127,   374   ff. ;    character   of,    ill; 

poetry  of,  252  ff.,  308  ff.,  370. 
Scaliger,  J.  C,  3,  34,  43  f.,  122  f. 
Scandinavia,  songs  of,  188,  191,  270,  353  f. 
Sc6af,  284  f. 
Scherer,  8,  88  f.,  133  f.,  178,  336,  349,  381, 

441,  446  f.,  452,  454,  459  f. 
Schiller,  49,  113,  119,375- 
Schipper.  315. 
Schlegel,  A.  W.,  9,  40  ff.,  48,  loi,  108,  119, 

122,  132  ff.,  254,  327,  346,  369  f.,  396,  415, 

423,  432,  435,  437. 
Schlegel,  F.,  5,  38. 
Schleicher,  398. 
Schleiermacher,  39,  117,  420. 
Schmeller,  J.  A.,  405  f. 
Schnaderhiipjl,    144,    200,    297,    299,    403, 

405  ff. 
Schoolcraft,  245,  248  f.,  308  ff. 
Schopenhauer,  371. 
Schroder,  68. 
Schuchardt,  403. 
Schultze,  9,  374  f.,  383. 
Schwab,  427. 
Schwartz,  W.,  438. 
Science,  126. 
Scotland,  ballads  of,  173,  183,  327;  songs 

of,  265,  273. 
Scott.  Sir  W.,  156,  168  f.,  173,  181,  414. 
Seasons,  poetry  of  the,  470. 
Selden,  2,  80. 

Sentiment,  25  f.,  147  f.,  156,  159,  421,  432. 
Sermons  in  verse,  80. 
Serranas,  459. 
Servia,  songs  of,  299  f. 
Seville,  dance  in  cathedral  of,  335. 
Shaftesbury,  46,  126. 
Shakspere,  113  f.,  316,  426  f.,  470  ff. 
Shaman,  221,  244,  338,  379,  392  f.,  429,  442  f. 


482 


INDEX 


Shelley,  Mary,  253. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  10,  336. 

Siberia,  songs  of,  211  ff.,  243. 

Sidney,  34  f.,  122,  130. 

Siebs,  74. 

Sievers,  62,  86  ff.,  267. 

Silius  Italicus,  336. 

Simile,  446  f. 

Simonides,  220. 

Simplicity,  190. 

Simrock,  435. 

Sittl,  221,  431. 

Skeat,  291. 

Skolion,  395,  403. 

Smend,  186. 

Smith,  Adam,  14,  23,  50,  96,  256,  336,  354. 

Smythe,  H.  W.,  217,  258,  266,  285. 

Society,  220,  368,  449  f.,  462  f.,  473;  and 

poetry,  I,  7,  52,  89  f.,  loi,  120. 
Sonnet,  145. 
Souriau,  55.  350. 
Southey's  Doctor,  278. 
Spanish  Tragedy,  the,  427. 
Spencer,  H.,  18,  89  f.,  243,  328,  350,  365, 

372,  377  ff.,  383,  385,  391,  398,  437,  442. 
Spencer,  Dr.  John,  346. 
Spens,  Sir  Patrick,  172,  472. 
Spenser,  E.,  118,  122,  206,  241. 
Spinning-songs,  277  ff. 
"  Spirituals,"  98. 

Spontaneity,  65,  350  f.,  355  ff,,  369,  373. 
Stedman,  E.  C,  120. 
Steenstrup,  187,  190,  327,  343. 
Stein,  von,  427. 
Steinthal,  352,  361. 
Stev,  401,  418  f. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  314. 
Storm,  G.,  355. 
Stornelli,  401,  405. 
Strabo,  64,  66. 
Strambotti,  401,  404  f.,  418. 
Street-songs,  166,  169. 
Style  of  poetry,  35,  54,  161  f.,  189  ff.,  434, 

444  ff- 
Sublime,  the,  53. 
Sully,  365. 

Summer  and  winter,  songs  of,  306  f. 
Swift,  61,  375. 
Sword-dance,  268,  336  f. 
Symonds,  J.  A.,  426. 
Sympathy,  115,  471  ff. 
Syria,  poetry  of,  218,  227,  236. 


Tacitus,  86,  205,  299,  336  f.,  392. 
Taine,  6,  359,  388. 


Talvj,  167, 182,  395. 

Tammuz,  237. 

Tarde,  137,  348,  351,  356  ff,,  362  f,,  374, 

376  f.,  380,  423,  460. 
Tartars,  songs  of  the,  71, 
Telimaque,  38,  46,  60. 
Temple,  Sir  William,  46,  467. 
Ten  Brink,  176,  213,  306,  326,  361,  403, 424. 
Tennyson,  82,  156, 190,  220,  388. 
Texte,  359,  389. 
Theocritus,  405,  418. 

Thought,  83,  113,  139,152,  374  f.,  383, 420  f. 
Thucydides,  17. 
TibuUus,  277,  299. 
Ticknor,  425. 
Tilie,  276. 
Tirade,  211. 
Tobler,  188,  194. 
Tragedy,  Greek,  257,  338,  369  f.,  371  ff., 

424,  444. 
Translations  in  prose,  49,  55,  57  ff. 
Trapp,  46. 
Turgot,  15,  59,  126. 
Tusser,  297. 
Twining,  i,  43. 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  18,  24,  204,  238,  283,  379,  428, 

436  ff. 

U 
Uii  Srmf,  148  ff. 
Uhland,  220,  281,  298,  306,  338,  343,  415, 

436. 
Usener,  69,  84,  213,  350,  421,  423. 

V 
Valentin,  319. 
Variation,  194,  209  ff ,  213  f.,  236,  256, 408  f,, 

423.  451- 
Varro,  66. 

Veddahs,  the,  330,  390  f.,  463,  466. 
Veisa,  355. 
Verbs,  450  ff. 

Vergil,  58,  73,  207,  298,  306,  334,  404  f.,418. 
Verse,  oldest  European,  85. 
Verse  (see  Rhythm),  54. 
Vico,  10,  128,  460. 
Vigfusson  and  Powell,  257. 
Vignoli,  440. 
Vigny,  De,  154,  373. 
Villemarqu6,  183  f. 
Villon,  148  ff.,  161. 
Vinesauf,  229. 
Vocero,  100,  168,  219  ff.,  321,  419 ;  literary 

form  of,  228  f. ;  of  savages,  243  ff. 
Vogu6,  E.  M.,  de,  115,  144. 
Vossius,  G.  J.,  44,  123. 
Vossius,  1.,  46. 


INDEX 


483 


W 

Wackemagel,  W.,  320. 

Wagner,  R.,  103,  120  f.,  171,  327  f.,  430. 

Waitz,  327,  329,  379  f. 

Wakes,  303. 

Wales,  songs  of,  288  f. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  365,  403. 

Wallaschek,   13,  91  ff.,  99  ff.,   260,   328  f., 

366,  381. 
Walther  von  der  Vogelweide,  430,  470. 
War,  songs  of,  86,  268  f.,  311,  388. 
War-dance,  311,  331  f. 
Was/,  the,  219. 
Warton,  Joseph,  47. 
Watts,  Theodore,  57. 
Webster,  John,  59. 
Wedding,  songs  of,  202  f.,  216  f.,  324. 
Weismann,  4,  363. 
Werner,  R.  M.,  420. 
Westphal,  84. 
Whately,  42,  48,  51  f. 


Wheeler,  B.  I.,  445. 

Williams,  Talcott,  16. 

Wilmanns,  85,  87. 

Witchell,  364. 

Wold,  293. 

Wolf,  F.,  71,  167,  176,  257  f.,  280,  315,  327, 

340. 
Wolff,  Eugen,  164,  432. 
Women,  songs   of,   199  f.,   222,   226,   228, 

240  f.,  250,  263  f.,   269  f.,  329,  339,  341, 

397  f-  419.  464. 
Woodberry,  G.  E.,  162. 
Wordsworth,  150,  155,  162,  451. 
Wright,  Thomas,  303,  307. 
Writing,  invention  of,  252, 
Wundt,  360,  363,  366,  428. 


X 


Xenophon,  34,  337. 


Zell,  198,  260,  271,  283,  404. 


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Edited,  with  Introduction,  by  J.  Dykes  Campbell. 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD'S   POETICAL   WORKS. 

"  Contains  some  of  the  wisest  and  most  melodious  verse  that  this  age  has  pro 
duced."  —  AthencEum. 


PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY'S    POETICAL   WORKS. 

Edited  by  Professor  Dovvden.     With  Portrait. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH'S    COMPLETE    POETICAL   WORKS. 

With  an  Introduction  by  John  Morley,  and  Portrait. 

"  Mr.  Morley  has  seldom  written  anything  fresher  or  more  vigorous  than  the 
essay  on  Wordsworth  which  he  has  prefixed  to  Macmillan's  new  and  admirable  one- 
volume  edition  of  the  poet  —  the  only  complete  edition."  —  Spectator. 

"  The  finest  of  all  tributes  to  the  memory  of  Wordsworth  is  a  complete  edition 
of  his  poetical  works,  printed  in  one  volume,  and  sold  at  a  few  shillings.  It  runs  to 
near  a  thousand  pages,  and  is  all  that  it  need  be  in  type  and  clearness  of  arrange- 
ment. It  stands  midway  oetween  the  editions  de  luxe  and  the  cheap  typographical 
renderings  of  other  classics  of  the  English  school.  In  a  good  binding  it  would  do 
)erfectly  well  for  the  library  of  a  millionaire;  in  serviceable  cloth  it  would  make 
almost  a  librar>'  in  itself  for  the  student  of  humble  means.  It  has  a  good  bibli- 
ography of  all  the  poet's  writings,  a  catalogue  of  biographies,  an  index  of  first  lines 
and  a  complete  list  of  the  poems  in  the  order  of  their  production  year  by  year. 
Above  all,  it  has  an  introduction  from  the  pen  of  Mr.  John  Morley."  —  Daily  News. 


SHAKESPEARE'S   COMPLETE    WORKS. 

Edited  by  W.  G.  Clark,  M.A.,  and  W.  Aldis  Wright,  M.A.  With  Glossary. 
New  Edition. 

MORTE   D'ARTHUR. 

Sir  Thomas  Malory's  Book  of  King  Arthur,  and  of  his  Noble  Knights  of  the 
Round  Table.  The  Edition  of  Caxton,  revised  for  modern  use.  With  an  Intro' 
duction,  Notes,  and  Glossary,  by  Sir  Edward  Strachey.     New  Edition. 

ROBERT   BURNS'   COMPLETE   WORKS. 

The  Poems,  Songs,  and  Letters.  Edited,  with  Glossarial  Index,  and  Bio- 
graphical Memoir,  by  Alexander  Smith.     New  Edition. 

SIR   WALTER    SCOTT'S    POETICAL   WORKS. 

With  Biographical  and  Critical  Essay  by  Francis  Turner  Palgrave.  New 
Edition, 

OLIVER   GOLDSMITH'S    MISCELLANEOUS    WORKS. 

With  Biographical  Introduction  by  Professor  Masson.     New  Edition. 

EDMUND    SPENSER'S    COMPLETE    WORKS. 

Edited  with  Glossary  by  R.  Morris,  and  Memoir  by  J.  W.  Hales.  New 
Edition. 

ALEXANDER  POPE'S    POETICAL   WORKS. 

Edited,  with  Notes  and  Introductory  Memoir,  by  Professor  Ward.  New 
Edition. 

JOHN   DRYDEN'S    POETICAL   WORKS. 

Edited,  with  a  Revised  Text  and  Notes,  by  W.  D.  Christie,  M.A.,  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge.     New  Edition. 

COWPER'S    POETICAL   WORKS. 

Edited,  with  Notes  and  Biographical  Introduction,  by  Rev.  W.  Benham,  B.D. 
New  Edition. 

MILTON'S    POETICAL    WORKS. 

With  Introductions  by  Professor  Masson. 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY, 

66    FIFTH   AVENUE,  NEW   YORK. 


DATE  DUE 

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AUP  1 

1  1976  1 

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6  «j   1001 

5  1982 

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9  l98i 

ilOt  OCT 

1 5 1985 

OCT  13 

1985 

GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  L)    S    A. 

UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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